In a groundbreaking integration of the work of Lacan, Winnicott, and Tustin, Catherine Mathelin reveals how a child's symptoms can be a striking reflection of it's parents' unresolved conflicts. She shows how her patients' art, much of it reproduced here, can communicate both initial anguish and progress in treatment, and draws on her experience of working on a neonatal unit to argue compellingly that a child's mental health can be endangered even before birth. -- from the publisher “This is a book hard to put down, filled with the most fascinating brief case vignettes of parents and children who live in worlds disconnected form each other, hoping for experts to heal their suffering.” -Anni Bergman, coauthor of The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant Catherine Mathelin, a psychoanalyst and psychologist, works on the child psychiatry and neonatology units of the Saint-Denis hospitals. She was a member of Lacan's Ecole Freudienne from 1974 until its dissolution, and of the Centre de formation et de recherches psychoanlytiques (Center for Psychoanlytic Training and Research) until the founding by Maud Mannoni of Espace Analytique, of which she is currently a member. She is the President of Enfance en Jeu, an association for research and study in pediatrics, psychoanalysis, and pedagogy. In 1995 she established the Consultation des Buttes-Chaumont in Paris, a psychoanalytic treatment and training center. Table of Contents: The Lacanian Clinical Field: Series Overview; Introduction; Part I- THE FIRST MEETING WITH THE ANALYST: 1. Felicien and the “Intellectual Women” 2. Aurore and Christine, or The Child Waiting Offstage 3. Arthur and the Secret of the Sea Elephants 4. Margot and the Magic Skin Eruptions 5. Paul: How Much Does a Child Cost? 6. Samira: The Child as Symptom, or the Child's Symptom? 7. Valentin and His Lion 8. Violette, or the Drama of Jealousy 9. Lolita, the “Abnormal Child” 10. Adrien, the Tiger, and the “Didy” 11. From the Pediatrician to the Psychoanalyst: “Fix This Child” 12. Listening to Carla's Heart 13. Anna 14. Alexandre, or the Broken Piano Part II- FROM THE FIRST SESSION TO THE ANALYTIC TREATMENT: 15. Xenophon, or the Name-Crosses 16. Alice, or the Black Sun of Phobia 17. Jeremy, or the “Clown Theater” Part III- THE CLEVER BABY: 18. A Look at the Baby of Today 19. Cannelle and Gingerbread: A Child Who Looks Good Enough to Eat 20. An Analyst on a Neonatal Unit: “A Different Experience” References; Index; Contributors Contributors: Catherine Mathelin, Judith Feher-Gurewich, Susan Fairfield |