Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis in a Changing World: Children on the Edge

This book applies psychoanalytic insight to work with children and adolescents in a changing, often traumatic, world. Each chapter considers how psychoanalysis can develop and be developed, assessing how in the modern world, psychological disturbance and psychological trauma is manifest in new, unfamiliar ways. From new and different social and technological realities, to the internet, and new sexual discourse, each chapter explores how the analyst can hold onto fundamental psychoanalytic understandings of mental functioning, address the young patient’s or family’s need for containment, while respecting the importance of drives, the varieties of psychosexuality, and the powerful impact of anxiety on psychological development. In relation to children, these authors disclose the potential destructiveness of impingements from adults on a precious, vulnerable development. This collection is essential reading for all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as other health and educational professionals working with children and adolescents.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Introduction Part 1: New Frontiers, Diagnostic, Theoretical and Technical Challenges Introduction 1. Early Intervention for Toddlers at Risk of Autism: Theorisation, Controversies, Convergences 2. The Role of Early Anxieties when Emerging from Autistic Pathological Organisations: The Dilemma of Cure 3. Questions of Origins and Identity in Today's Children 4. Patient(s) in Parent-Infant Psychotherapy Part 2: Children on the Edge: Domestic and Social Violence, Abuse and Deprivation Introduction 5. Cassie: From Violent Eruption to Gathering Thoughts 6. The Child Analyst as a 'New Developmental Object' to a Developmentally Delayed Young Child 7. Psychoanalytic Intimacy as an Alternative to Psychic Suffering for Children on the Edge Part 3: New Realities, New Challenges Introduction 8. New Challenges for Adolescence: the Virtual World and the Gendered Body 9. Child Analysis 2.0: Jonah and the Internet 10. Enforced Virtuality: An Unavoidable Dialogue with some Basics of Communication within Child Psychotherapy/Analysis 11. Primitive Anxieties about Intrusions: Imaginative Conjectures about "no Entry" Defences and Covid-19

About the Author :
Catalina Bronstein is a training and supervising analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and a former president of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She is a child and adolescent and adult psychoanalyst and works at the Brent Adolescent Centre in London and in private practice. Bronstein is also Visiting Professor at the Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London. Sara Flanders is a training and supervising psychoanalyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She works at the Brent Adolescent Centre in London and is Co-Chair of the Child and Adolescent Forum of the European Psychoanalytical Federation.

Review :
'This is a very important book. It is comprehensive, true to the continuing significance of early psychoanalytic concepts for skilled and effective treatments, but with a wide and far-reaching take on the newer issues and pathologies facing children and adolescents in the contemporary world, including the changing sexualities, family structures and new technologies. It is full of psychoanalytic depth and nuance and a large and sometimes interestingly conflicting range of theory. The clinical work is beautiful. Read, learn and enjoy.' Anne Alvarez, PhD MACP Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist 'Catalina Bronstein and Sara Flanders’ new book, Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis in a Changing World: Children on the Edge, is a remarkable work of scholarship that brings together leading contemporary psychoanalytic authors and clinicians in child and adolescent psychoanalysis. This volume is extraordinary in the breadth of its scope that is enriched by clinical and theoretical papers from psychoanalysts in North and South America, Israel and Europe. This book is also noteworthy for the wide array of topics covered in the chapters which include discussions of psychoanalytically oriented infant observation, treatment of autistic children and adolescents, difficulties in early mother/infant relations and current topics such as gender identity, domestic violence, and impact of the pandemic. I highly recommend this book for beginning and seasoned psychotherapists and psychoanalysts who will surely discover the richness of contemporary child analysis.' Lawrence J. Brown, author of Transformations in Clinical Psychoanalysis: Dreaming, Emotions and the Present Moment (Routledge, 2019) and On Freud’s ‘Moses and Monotheism’ (Routledge, 2022) 'In this carefully edited volume Bronstein and Flanders have gathered an impressive collection of papers from a gifted international group of child analysts and psychotherapists. They cover the whole period of childhood and adolescence and a vast range of emotional problems, and demonstrate clinical imagination, theoretical range and sensitivity to contemporary realities. The richness lies in the vivid descriptions of life in the consulting room, exploring truthfully therapeutic progress and limitations. This is a book for the practitioners of child analysis and others to treasure and be inspired by.' Margaret Rustin