‘The Meaning of the Child to the Parent: The Development and Validation of a new method of classifying parenting interviews for the nature of the parent-child relationship’, PhD thesis, London: University of Roehampton (original) (raw)
Related papers
On the infant's meaning for the parent: A study of four mother-daughter pairs
Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 1982
Four mother-daughter pairs were systematically followed from the third trimester of pregnancy through the first eight months postpartum by semistructured interviews and by naturalistic observations in the hospital, home and office. These individual case reports illustrate how the psychological meaning of the pregnancy and fetus/infant appeared to have shaped the neonatal perceptions, early mother'infant relationships, and seemed to correlate with specific mothering behaviors. The prenatal psychological factors, and the resultant meaning and perception of the infant, are also discussed as potential risk indicators and/or foci of therapeutic interventions.
Parenthood and child psychological development
2012
This paper presents an analysis of the concept of parenthood based on the psychoanalytical perspective, which allows the study of both the subjectivity of parents and children. The hypothesis is that parenthood, characteristically infiltrated by the narcissism of parents themselves, can be a source of tension. Based on this premise, it is possible to understand certain responses in the development of a child's ego and which signals success to a greater or lesser extent in the passage from the principle of pleasure to the principle of reality. We also stress the importance of studying effects of this narcissist infiltration of parental love on the subjectivity of parents. This study contributes both to investigations addressing psychoneurosis, based on a comparison provided between clinical practice and psychoanalytical theory, and to the investigation of more complex social phenomena such as violence and the disaggregation of human communities.
Constructing and Addressing the 'Ordinary Devoted Mother
History Workshop Journal, 2014
Donald Winnicott's 50 BBC radio talks, broadcast between 1943-62, constitute the heart of his oeuvre and were later published in the bestselling book, 'The Child, the Family and the Outside World'. This article argues that, although commentators have routinely alluded to the broadcast origins of these talks, the importance of their institutional context is commonly effaced, as a result dehistoricising them. The article seeks to recover the conditions of production of the talks as 'spoken word', emphasising Winnicott's formidable linguistic skills, his understanding of register and his sensitivity to listeners, qualities developed under the formative influence of Winnicott's two producers, Janet Quigley and Isa Benzie. Contemporary attempts by the BBC to popularise psychoanalysis met with significant resistance and criticism within the Corporation but Winnicott avoided such controversy, it is argued here, because of the way he was positioned within the BBC, and the role he played in wartime British society. The article places Winnicott among other popularisers of psychoanalytic ideas at the time, such as Susan Isaacs, John Bowlby and Ruth Thomas, and contends that, while Winnicott's idealisation of motherhood has been rightly criticised, his broadcasts also conveyed a powerful sense of motherhood as a lived experience. *** Between 1943 and 1962, the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott gave more than 50 broadcasts on BBC Radio. 2 Mostly taking the form of scripted talks, the broadcasts covered a wide range of subjects-from guilt and jealousy to evacuation and step-parents. Many (though not all) were subsequently published as pamphlets, and later formed the basis of a bestselling book-'The Child, the Family and the Outside World', first published by Penguin in 1964, and two other volumes, 'Talking to Parents' and 'Winnicott on the Child'. 3 For most non-clinicians or general readers these books 4 are their port of entry into Winnicott, and constitute the heart of his oeuvre. Both historians of psychoanalysis and biographers of Winnicott routinely acknowledge their genesis as broadcasts, but mostly in a manner as to suggest that this was
Introductory remarks by the issue editors: The multiple dimensions of the parent–baby story
International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 2016
In their introductory remarks, the guest editors, themselves presenters at the conference "Parent-Infant Disturbance: Theory and Therapy," introduce the philosophy and methodology underlying this interdisciplinary psychoanalytic conference and outline the multiple dimensions of the issue at hand, as they are addressed by the individual contributions to this volume. The paper concludes with a remembrance of and dedication to the victims of the Paris terrorist attack of November 13, 2015.
This paper describes the emergent reflections within a peer study group of analytical psychologists around the topics of new birth and its potential transformative power. In our professional practice that deals with parenting and parent-child relationship , next to the clinic work there is also a part of preventive nature. From more than ten years, one author is committed to promote the relationship within mother-child dyads in experiential process oriented groups; a second author is devoted to accompany and sustain the first two years of formation of the adoptive family; a third is applying Infant Observation in the educational, social and family settings . Focusing on the origin and early development of the relationship between parent and child , authors are creatively constructing a model of preventive intervention based on integrating jungian, attachment theory and developmental functional neuroscientific perspectives . Our reflections comprehend how an intervention model that can accompany the first impact of the dialectic of opposites of otherness and belonging on the individual, (the adult or the child), could be later reflected not only in that mother-child pair, in that parental couple, in that family but , as the water circles, has positive effects on society closer to that mother child , to that parents, to that family and last but not least, that local cultural society. Observation and research have shown the uniqueness of personality types from birth: the beginning of the mental life of the newborn and the development of the sense of self of the child pass through the dimension of feeling seen, recognized, accepted, in his own specific identity, in his emergent potential, in what he senses , feels and thinks. It is a relational and intersubjective process. This model of intervention intend to offer a cultural proposal that emphasizes and focuses on intersubjectivity within the expressive and communicative exchanges between a parent and a child. A new cultural proposal that approaches the parenting role and function more as a creative process and experience than as a "simply" educational ,developmental experience , where the birth of a baby or the entrance and the inclusion of an adopted child can also represent for the adults (parents, families) an occasion for personal growth and mental development.
International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 2020
In this article I will discuss, departing from the usual disintegration of the newborn's experiences, how one can model the integration of different forms of memory, sensory channels, and mode of representation of these early experiences. Based on the inborn semiotics of the affect system, I pursue the idea that the affect expression of the mother comprises the organizational nucleus of the child's future personality, and that the representational format of the very young child comprises the mother's faces and vocalizations. In the aftermath of parental projections, the baby is confronted with plenty of dominant affect expressions, for example contempt, disgust, anger, and fear. These act in contrast to happiness in terms of guiding the affect expression of secure attachment. Following Tomkins, I call these interaction schemes "emotional scripts" and demonstrate that they are carried on into adulthood. Here I launch and discuss four clinical vignettes that can be characterized as being governed by such an "emotional script." I try to show that these scripts can be redrafted if the governing affect can be exchanged with a different one. These considerations have led to a revised form of the procedure called "splitting." In addition, implications for treatment techniques are depicted.