Parental Self Research Articles

Launching Parent to Parent Schemes

Parent self help groups have often been arranged informally among parents of children with special educational needs, but the Parent to Parent schemes described by Garry Hornby, lecturer in the School of Education, Hull University, are more organised and include training courses for parents.

The parental self-concept: a theoretical exploration and practical application.

The psychological birth of a parent is a highly complex affective and cognitive process, generating in a mother or father a sense of self-as-parent. Selected literature on the subject is reviewed, a definition proposed, and the concept of the parental self explored theoretically. The relevance of the concept to psychotherapeutic work with parents is considered.

Bereavement counselling after sudden infant death.

Of 14 families who suffered a sudden infant death, eight were followed up intensively over several months and offered individual counselling, parents' group meetings, and interviews with doctors as a way of helping them come to terms with their feelings of loss. Five couples accepted short term support from their health visitor, and one refused help. Many families experienced considerable stress including marital conflict, difficulties with surviving children, and anxiety about future children becoming victims of the sudden infant death syndrome. It was concluded that medical social workers, health visitors, hospital paediatricians, general practitioners, and parent self help groups are in key positions to help. The success of such help is likely to depend on the confidence that each helper has that his or her contribution will be valued by the bereaved family.

Parental Negative Self and Adolescent Suicide Attempts

The parents of 46 adolescent suicide attempters were compared with parents of 46 adolescent nonattempters to determine differences in factors descriptive of self image. Results indicated that the fathers of the attempters were significantly more depressed, had significantly lower self-esteem, and consumed significantly more alcohol than did fathers of nonattempters. Mothers of the adolescent attempters were significantly more anxious, experienced significantly greater suicidal ideation, and consumed significantly more alcohol than mothers of nonattempters.

Narcissism in relation to objects, reality and phantasy

Today, narcissism is defined as the libidinal cathexis of the Self. Healthy narcissism, implies that the child, from infancy on, has effectively internalized a sense of physical, and later psychic, well being through interaction, first with the mother and later with other persons important to the child. Once the psychic structure begins to grow, the nature of the child's developing inner representations of the parents, and of the Self becomes apparent through behavior and affective relationships within the immediate environment. The child will cathect the parental figures and self experiences with love and joy, or with precursors of anxiety, signs of withdrawal, hyper-kinetic restlessness, or the first signs of somatization of psychic pain. The first Self is a body-Self and later includes, in addition to internalized interactions with mother, segments of the environment which are being continually explored through the child's developing ego functions. With the consolidation of gender identity, the earliest relationships of the child to objects gradually takes on more specific emotional qualities. As differentiation of Self from objects continues, the extent to which a libidinal cathexis toward Self and object dominates over a hostile relationship toward others becomes evident. If hostility is turned back upon the Self already during the second year of life displeasure and anxiety will characterize the child's relationship to love objects and the environment rather than a free and spontaneous exploration of it. Internalization of happy interactions with mother and others, and later identification with adults, promotes the expression of infantile omnipotent strivings in the practicing subphases (as Mahler has described) which takes place approximately between one-and-a-half and three years of age. It is crucial that the mother aid the child's

Self-Consistency as a Function of the Parental Self

Self-Consistency as a Function of the Parental Self