Child Analyst Research Articles

Training as a child analyst.

Journal of Analytical PsychologyVolume 31, Issue 3 p. 207-212 Training as A Child Analyst LAWRENCE BROWN, LAWRENCE BROWN OxfordSearch for more papers by this author LAWRENCE BROWN, LAWRENCE BROWN OxfordSearch for more papers by this author First published: July 1986 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-5922.1986.00207.xCitations: 3AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume31, Issue3July 1986Pages 207-212 RelatedInformation

Contrasting Neurotic Styles in the Analysis of Two Preschool Children

The first child to be treated psychoanalytically was a preschooler, and his short and successful treatment was skillfully supervised by Freud. In the follow-up many years later, he had remained well. An untreated child, with a different neurotic illness, grew up to become the Wolfman, and his subsequent treatment was “interminable” and not too successful. The two cases represent contrasting neurotic styles and pose an interesting hypothetical “what if?”: What if the Wolfman had also been treated psychoanalytically as a child? Would the outcome in adult life have been equally successful? To provide even a tentative answer would seem to depend on finding two similar cases and having them treated by the same child analyst, using the same technique governed by the same underlying theoretical assumptions over the same period of time. Two fairly similar cases were found, meeting the criteria for circumscribed and diffuse neurosis and both were treated by the same child analyst until the neurotic impediments had been removed and normal development was resumed.

Children's patterns in mourning the death of a loved one.

Death impinges on us in different ways and at different times. Some of us were touched by it early on in our lives and have suffered hard-to-heal wounds and lasting tender scars. Others have encountered death repeatedly and may even now be in anguish, struggling to cope with dying or bereavement. And others yet are fortunate in having been granted a briefer or longer period in our lives when we can healthily deny the everpresent shadow of death. Absorbed in the business of living, we manage not be affected significantly by the evidence of death around us because it does not immediately befall ourselves or our loved ones. Such temporary disregard for death is then inevitably shattered when suddenly death comes very close and demands that we come to terms painfully in a new and different way. Over 20 years ago, this happened to our group of 14 child psychoanalysts at the Cleveland Center for Research in Child Development and Hanna Perkins Therapeutic School (1), and prompted us to embark on our research on ...

The body image of children of nursery school age

Both from the view of the pediatrician (16) and the child analyst (3, 6, 9, 21), and recently, too, by behavioral biologists (15) the emotional aspects of illness and hospitalization have been treated with increasing differentiation. On the other hand there are only few studies regarding the cognitive aspects of the problem, i.e. the concepts children have of their bodies and of illness, which depend on the momentary level of their intellectual development. Children's ideas and fears arising from illness or hospitalization frequently can only be understood with the knowledge of the actual body-image. Therefore we have tried to investigate by interviews and drawings of three- to seven-year-old preschoolers their conceptions of the interior of the body and its function. The sources of these ideas were discussed and some suggestions were made how the results of the study could be used in hospital and kindergarten.

Studies in childhood bereavement.

A group of child psychoanalysts, associated with the Cleveland Center for Research in Child Development and the Hanna Perkins Therapeutic Nursery School and Kindergarten, studied 23 children who had lost a parent through death. These children varied greatly in socio-economic, religious, racial and ethnic background and had suffered bereavement at different points in their development, as early as a few weeks old and as late as 13 years of age. The majority were in individual psychoanalytic treatment, seen 5 times weekly over several years. Some were treated by way of the parent while attending the Hanna Perkins Therapeutic School. The research group compared and discussed the multitude of data with a view to understanding mourning and the effects of bereavement on the personality, with a view to developing techniques in assisting children and families cope with the stress, and with a view to developing some prophylactic measures to minimize pathological resolutions. The results of the research were published in "A Child's Parent Dies" (1). This paper focuses on sharing those findings which might be helpful to the clinician in the assessment of bereaved patients and in assisting them and their families in the crucial period of parental loss or shortly following it.

Psychology of the Scientist: XLVI. Anna Freud

Little is known of Anna Freud, the greatest living child psychoanalyst, for she has deliberately sought anonymity. By reading the biographies and letters of her father Sigmund Freud and what little appears in other writings about her, the author makes inferences as to why Anna has chosen to shun public attention.

A Contribution by John Bowlby

In giving a brief account of salient events in my professional life I will start in 1937 when I was aged 30 and had just completed my formal training as a child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Apart from a medical background and an interest in psychology, my choice of career had been determined by what I had seen and heard during the six months that I had spent in a school for disturbed children between my preclinical training at Cambridge, where I had also read natural sciences and psychology, and completing my medical qualification at University College Hospital. During my time at the school I had worked with children and adolescents whose difficulties I know now to be typical of much personality disorder, and had been exposed to hypotheses, derived from the ‘new psychology’ emanating from Vienna, regarding the role of childhood experience in their origin. Accordingly I had decided to train as a psychoanalyst. This I began before qualifying medically and continued whilst spending eighteen months at the Maudsley, learning the psychiatry of adults as one of Aubrey Lewis's early students. This proved a productive relationship, not least because on many questions we agreed to differ.

The mirroring function of the child analyst

The mirroring function of the child analyst

ATTITUDES OF CHILD PSYCHIATRISTS TOWARD HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING AND CHILD CUSTODY

Family Court ReviewVolume 17, Issue 2 p. 21-24 ATTITUDES OF CHILD PSYCHIATRISTS TOWARD HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING AND CHILD CUSTODY Byron L. Nestor, Byron L. Nestor Byron L. Nestor, M.D. is a practicing child psychiatrist and child analyst in Berkeley, California. He is a consultant to the Alameda County Conciliation Court. His special interest is working with other professionals in improving the quality of custody evaluations and consultation to the court.Search for more papers by this author Byron L. Nestor, Byron L. Nestor Byron L. Nestor, M.D. is a practicing child psychiatrist and child analyst in Berkeley, California. He is a consultant to the Alameda County Conciliation Court. His special interest is working with other professionals in improving the quality of custody evaluations and consultation to the court.Search for more papers by this author First published: September 1979 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.174-1617.1979.tb00791.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume17, Issue2September 1979Pages 21-24 RelatedInformation

A CHILD'S PARENT DIES. Edited by Eerna Furman. New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1974, $15.00; 316 pp

This book evolved as 14 child analysts from the Cleveland Center for Research in Child Development met weekly to study the problems of the bereaved child. Careful observations were made on the status and treatment of 23 children who lost a parent at various ages between 10 months and 13 years; only one presented to the analyst because of the death of a parent. While, in passing, the author comments on other losses a child may sustain, such as that of a sibling or of a parent or parent surrogate throught some means other than death, the focus on the book is on the effect on the child of the death of a parent.

Making contact with the inner world of the child: Toward a theory of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children

SYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY of children evolved out of the combination of psychoanalytic psychology, the direct observation of young children, and the study of the child’s immediate and larger social environment, primarily the family and the school. The child guidance movement, a uniquely American approach to the treatment of emotional problems of children, remained carefully balanced between an emphasis on the child’s inner life, on the one hand, and on the importance of the environment in the treatment of the child, on the other. The relatively heavy emphasis which most training centers placed on the individual treatment of children was primarily related to the influence of psychoanalytic theory on the practice of psychotherapy in this country. Anna Freud,’ with her pioneering work in child psychoanalysis, was the singularly most influential person in the development of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children. This meant not only the application of psychoanalytic theory to the understanding of the child’s psychopathology, but that the principles which guided the individual treatment of the child were also derived from psychoanalytic treatment principles. These principles, in turn, were to a greater or lesser degree similar to the ones employed in the analysis of adults. Though there are considerable variations regarding the rigidity with which the principles of analytic abstinence are being observed in child analysis, many child analysts maintain that children, no different from adults, can be treated by a focus upon their transferences, and that the only way to promote the analytic process with them is through the exclusive use of interpretations.2 Weiss takes issue with the practice of consulting with the parents on the same grounds as he does with giving the child candy or birthday gifts; namely that they all interfere with transference developments and detract the child from the work of the analysis. “If the child’s pathology is in the past, if it is structuralized, then it can be analyzed within the transference. If the pathology is of the present and is a continuation of the past, that aspect which is current and not a transference onto the parents cannot be analyzed at that time. That which is transference, whether to analyst or to From the Deparrmenr of PsychiarrF (.4dult Divisions. L’nrversif~~ o/’ Cincinnari. (‘ollypc, III Medicine. Cincinnati, Ohio and the Cincinnati P.~ychoanaiyric In~fitute. Cincinnati, Ohrr)

Beyond the Best Interests of the Child. By Joseph Goldstein, Anna Freud, and Albert J. Solnit. New York: The Free Press, 1973. $7.95; 170 pp

Occasionally a book is written that is so full of memorable one-liners that one is tempted to overquote in a review. Such a book has been written by, to paraphrase a child's game, a doctor, lawyer, and analyst chief. Joseph Goldstein is a professor of law at Yale who specializes in the application of psychoanalysis to law; Albert Solnit is a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Yale; Anna Freud heads the Hempstead Child Therapy Clinic in London, and probably knows more about the emotional lives of young children than any other authority.

Remarks on Receiving the C. Anderson Aldrich Award

I take the honour which is being bestowed on me today as another welcome sign that the estrangement between pediatrics and child psychology is nearing its end and the partners on either side are contemplating a serious engagement, if not the propect of future marriage with each other. There are many other indications which point in the same direction. I only need to mention the fact that there are now places of learning where the head of the department combines in his own person training and functions in physical as well as mental child care; or that pediatricians are considered essential consultants in child guidance clinics, or that some pediatricians participate in the discussions of interdisciplinary hospital groups, or that, occasionally, child psychiatrists and even child analysts are called to the bedside of hospitalized children for consultation. There is no reason, on the other hand, to feel entirely optimistic and to relax efforts towards further re-alignment. Cooperative attitudes between the two disciplines can also be regarded still as few and far between and, above all, confined to selected medical specialities and a small number of selected, furthest advanced, and enlightened centers. There exist still many children's wards where bodily care is so paramount that any thought about the child's mental concerns is excluded as intrusive and disruptive. There are, above all, the many surgeons who, rightly or wrongly, feel that their difficult task cannot be accomplished except by determined and exclusive concentration on the defective body part which needs repair.

Aspects of Communication Between Patients and Doctors: An Analysis of the Discourse in Medical Interviews

The transcripts of tape-recorded interviews of pediatric endocrinologists and patients with Turner's syndrome and their parents were reviewed in consultation with child psychoanalysts in order to evaluate certain aspects of communication between patients and doctors. The transcripts showed that the doctors often talked at cross purposes with the parents and their patients, evading emotional issues in favor of quasi-scientific explanations which the patients and parents did not understand. Parts of the discourse, at times unconscious, have been shown to be of great importance as means of communication. Reviewing the transcripts of the doctor-patients discourse is an excellent way of improving one's therapeutic communication with the patient. The same material can be used for teaching purposes.

Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Lectures for Child Analysts and Teachers

Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Lectures for Child Analysts and Teachers

Personality characteristics of child analysts: a comparative study of child analyst students and other students as analysis of adults.

Personality characteristics of child analysts: a comparative study of child analyst students and other students as analysis of adults.

The Child Analyst at Work

The Child Analyst at Work

Sex Education in Schools— A Polemic

To the Editor:— The American Medical Association does a disservice to itself and the American people by attempting to label opponents of sex education programs as political extremists or uninformed. You have neglected to mention a third category—namely, well-informed psychiatrists and at least one well-known child psychoanalyst. As an AMA and APA member, who served for a year on a medical society's Family Life Education (FLE) committee, and as a mother of four children in the public school system, I cannot plead ignorance, nor am I now, nor have I ever been a member of the John Birch Society. I am an active opponent of my county's FLE program, and, I believe, for sound psychiatric reasons. I weary of the effort to shut off debate by the use of labels. The AMA may or may not be a tool of the Communist party. It is, however, in my opinion, lacking

The Child Analyst at Work

The Child Analyst at Work

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:The Child Analyst at Work Elizabeth GeleerdManagement of Emotional Disorders in Pediatric Practice J. L. SchulmanGuide to Psychiatry (2nd Edition) Myre SimPaediatric X‐Ray Diagnosis (5th Edition) John CaffeyEpilepsy Richard P. Schmidt and B. Joe WilderAdvances in Child Development and Behavior, Volume 3 Lewis P. Lipsitt and Charles C. SpikerRehabilitation in Sweden Karl MontanComposition of Peripheral Nerves I. A. Boyd and M. R. DaveyAtlas of the Central Nervous System in Man R. A. Miller and E. BurackThe Education of Physically Handicapped Blind and Deaf Children in East Africa Elizabeth M. AndersonProgrammed Sex Education: Babies and Families, You Begin Life, You Grow Up, Contraception R. W. Kind and John Leedham