The Body and Compulsion from Infancy to Young Adulthood: New Perspectives on Addiction, Self-Harm and Suicide examines the complex interplay between early childhood experiences and the development of compulsive behaviours across the lifespan, with a focus on how these compulsions present from infancy to young adulthood.
A diverse group of international psychoanalysts from a range of theoretical perspectives and clinical experiences examine the severe bodily symptoms and syndromes often seen in young patients. They provide profound insight into the metapsychological foundations of repetition and destructiveness. Through compelling clinical vignettes and theoretical explorations, the contributors demonstrate how early trauma and neglect can disrupt the psyche, leading to damaging behavioural and emotional pathologies. Conditions such as eating disorders, depression, anxiety, violent behaviour, suicidality, and addiction are explored in detail, with the contributors highlighting the challenges they pose in the therapeutic setting and offering guidance on how to navigate sessions with those suffering from them.
This essential volume provides invaluable insights for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and mental health professionals working with patients struggling with compulsive patterns, while also offering theoretical depth for scholars interested in early development, trauma, and the foundations of psychic structure.
Table of Contents:
Introduction PART 1: Introduction: compulsive repetition with the body in infancy: consequences in adolescence and adulthood 1. Baby and compulsion 2. Early psychic co‑constructed structure in a hyperconnected world: new challenges for parents and for clinicians: discussion of Christine Anzieu-Premmereur chapter 3. Destructiveness, melancholy and the death drive 4. Some notes on repetition, repetition compulsion and drive: discussion of René Rousillon chapter 5. Repetition compulsion, from infancy to adulthood: a cross‑reading of the articles by C. Anzieu‑Premmereur and R. Roussillon PART 2 Introduction: facing the pain: from substance abuse to human dependence 6. Substance abuse in an adolescent boy: waking the object 7. Substance use as part of a pathological organization: disturbing the persecutor/protector of an adolescent girl 8. A shelter of numbness 9. Discussion on addiction in adolescence through three clinical cases PART 3 Introduction: self‑harming, a challenge for both patients and psychoanalysts 10. Self‑harming in early life and the difficulty in living for some infants 11. The silenced scream: 'under anorexia nervosa' 12. Self‑harm behaviors in adolescents: psychoanalytic understanding 13. Self‑harm behaviors in adolescents: understanding the role of social media, family and society: therapeutic implications 14. Discussion of self‑harming from a French psychoanalytic perspective 15. A 'superstructure' for holding on to or for self‑destroying? PART 4 Introduction: suicide and masochism in adolescence today 16. An endless tragedy: attempts and suicide in childhood and adolescence 17. Are the kids alright? Why is life unlivable?: suicidal tendencies in gender disorders and trans identity 18. Hosting strangeness: self‑harm and suicide in adolescence 19. Discussion on suicides and masochism in adolescence today through three clinical cases 20. Some reflections on the three papers of suicide and masochism in adolescence today
About the Author :
Christine Anzieu-Premmereur is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst based in New York City, USA. She is the series editor of the Routledge Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis Book Series and the co-editor of A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Contemporary Search for Pleasure (2023), The Infinite Infantile and the Psychoanalytic Task (2022) and A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World (2017).
Mary T. Brady is an adult and child psychoanalyst in San Francisco. She is the author of Psychoanalysis with Adolescents and Children: Learning to Surf (2024) and the editor of Braving the Erotic Field in the Treatment of Children and Adolescents (2022), as well as author of Analytic Engagements with Adolescents (2018) and The Body in Adolescence (2015).
Christine Franckx is a child psychiatrist and training (child) analyst in the Belgian Psychoanalytic Society. She is the EU co-chair of COCAP. She works in private practice in Antwerp with adults, children and infants.
Fernando M. Gómez is a pediatrician, psychiatrist, and child and adolescent psychoanalyst of the Asociación Psicoanalítica Argentina (APA), FEPAL, and IPA. He is the Latin America Co-Chair of COCAP and works in private practice in Buenos Aires with adults, children, and infants.
Review :
‘This COCAP volume is a profound and timely contribution. Psychoanalytic understandings of compulsive disorders expressed through the body in infants, children, and adolescents – including psychosomatic disorders in infants, repetitive behavioral disorders in young children, and emotional disorders in adolescence that underlie addiction, self-harm, and suicide – are discussed in lucid theoretical and clinical terms. Given the epidemic proportions of addiction and self-harm in adults today, this book demonstrates possible early life roots of pathology and offers a crucial foundation for therapists, educators, and members of the public devoted to alleviating self-destructive disorders in those whom they serve and/or love.’
Harriet L. Wolfe, M.D., Past President, International Psychoanalytical Association
‘This book tackles in a truly courageous, in-depth, and innovative way the theme of a ubiquitous psychosocial macro-phenomenon that characterizes our era, which dramatically endangers the development of new generations and which, until now, has not found adequate tools for understanding and community responses.
It is the most advanced contemporary theoretical-clinical text on this subject, thanks to the contributions of an interregional scientific network of the highest excellence, and offers fundamental help to all those who deal with these scenarios of suffering and who want to acquire useful and substantial tools for understanding and working.’
Stefano Bolognini, Past President, International Psychoanalytical Association
‘This new volume in the COCAP series brings together leading psychoanalytic perspectives on compulsion, addiction, self-harm, and suicidal states in infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Grounded in clinical material and theoretical elaboration, it explores early bodily experience, failures of symbolization, and the pathways from autoerotic regulation to destructive repetition. Contributors show how trauma, narcissistic fragility, and the digital environment shape new forms of suffering in the young. By linking early psychic organization to later psychopathology, this indispensable book speaks not only to clinicians but to all professionals working with children and adolescents across diverse fields of care and education.’
Virginia Ungar, M.D., Past President, International Psychoanalytical Association
‘In this remarkable volume the editors bring a series of deeply insightful and clinically rich chapters written by leading specialists in child and adolescent psychoanalysis from around the world, exploring some of the most urgent and complex issues facing families today.
With empathy and depth, the contributors address themes such as compulsion, psychosomatic manifestations, anorexia, substance abuse, self-harm, suicide, societal pressures, destructiveness and masochism—examining how these painful manifestations speak to deeper psychic realities. A central focus of the book is the nuanced exploration of the libidinization of the body as a protective mechanism against self-destruction.’
Catalina Bronstein, M.D., Training Analyst, British Psychoanalytical Society
