Relationships in Development: Infancy, Intersubjectivity, and Attachment(Relational Perspectives Book Series)

The recent explosion of new research about infants, parental care, and infant-parent relationships has shown conclusively that human relationships are central motivators and organizers in development. Relationships in Development examines the practical implications for dynamic psychotherapy with both adults and children, especially following trauma. Stephen Seligman offers engaging examples of infant-parent interactions as well as of psychotherapeutic process. He traces the place of childhood and child development in psychoanalysis from Freud onward, showing how different images about babies evolved and influenced analytic theory and practice.　 Relationships in Development offers a new integration of ideas that updates established psychoanalytic models in a new context: "Relational-developmental psychoanalysis." Seligman integrates four crucial domains:　 Infancy Research, including attachment theory and research Developmental Psychoanalysis Relational/intersubjective Psychoanalysis Classical Freudian, Kleinian, and Object Relations theories (including Winnicott). An array of specific sources are included: developmental neuroscience, attachment theory and research, studies of emotion, trauma and infant-parent interaction, and nonlinear dynamic systems theories. Although new psychoanalytic approaches are featured, the classical theories are not neglected, including the Freudian, Kleinian, Winnicottian, and Ego Psychology orientations. Seligman links current knowledge about early experiences and how they shape later development with the traditional psychoanalytic attention to the irrational, unconscious, turbulent, and unknowable aspects of the mind and human interaction. These different fields are taken together to offer an open and flexible approach to psychodynamic therapy with a variety of patients in different socioeconomic and cultural situations. Relationships in Development will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, and graduate students in psychology, social work, and psychotherapy. The fundamental issues and implications presented will also be of great importance to the wider psychodynamic and psychotherapeutic communities.

Table of Contents:
What to Expect from This Book Introduction: Why Developmental Psychoanalysis? Part I: How We Got Here: A Roadmap to Psychoanalytic Theories of Childhood and Development 1. Childhood Has Meaning of Its Own: Freud and the Invention of Psychoanalysis A. Freud’s Legacy for Developmental Psychoanalysis: Childhood at the Origins B. Real Women and Children: The Emergence of Child Psychoanalysis 2. Theory I: Foreshadowings: Core Themes and Controversies in the Early Freudian Theories 3. The Baby at the Crossroads: The Structural Model, Ego Psychology, and Object Relations Theories A. Ego Psychology: Psychic Structure, Adaptation, and External Realities B. Kleinian Psychoanalysis: Internal Objects, Phantasies, and the Centrality of the Infantile Primitive Mind C. The Middle Group: Toward a Relationship-Based Theory of Psychic Realities and Environments 4. Theory II: What Is a "Robust Developmental Perspective?" 5. The Postwar Diversification and Pluralization of Psychoanalysis in the United States: Interdisciplinary Expansion, the Widening Clinical Scope and the New Developmentalism Part II: The Relational Baby: Intersubjectivity and Infant Development 6. Infancy Research: Toward a Relational-Developmental Psychoanalysis 7. Clinical Implications of Infancy Research: Affect, Interaction and Non-Verbal Meaning in the Dyadic Field 8. Theory III: The Relational Baby: Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique 9. Continuities from Infancy to Adulthood: The Baby is Out of the Bathwater 10. Theory IV: The Move to the Maternal: Gender, Sexualities, and the Oedipus Complex in Light of Intersubjective Developmental Research Part III: Attachment and Recognition in Clinical Process: Reflection, Regulation and Emotional Security 11. Intersubjectivity Today: The Orientation and Concept 12. Attachment Theory and Research in Context: Clinical Implications 13. Recognition and Mentalization in Infancy and Psychotherapy: Convergences of Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis 14. Mentalization and Metaphor, Acknowledgement and Grief:　Forms of Transformation in the Reflective Space 15. Infant-Parent Interactions, Phantasies, and an "Internal Two-Person Psychology": Projective Identification and the Intergenerational Transmission of Early Trauma in Kleinian Theory and Intersubjective Infant Research Part IV: Vitality, Activity, and Communication in Development and Psychotherapy 16. Coming to Life in Time: Temporality, Early Deprivation, and the Sense of a Lively Future 17. Forms of Vitality and Other Integrations: Daniel Stern’s Contribution to the Psychoanalytic Core Part V: Awareness, Confusion and Uncertainty: Nonlinear Dynamics in Everyday Practice 18. Feeling Puzzled While Paying Attention: The Analytic Mindset as an Agent of Therapeutic Change 19. Dynamic Systems Theories as a Basic Framework for Psychoanalysis: Change Processes in Development and Therapeutic Action 20. Searching for Core Principles: Louis Sander’s Synthesis of Biological, Psychological, and Relational Factors and Contemporary Developmental Psychodynamics