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 its 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. "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 from each other, hoping for experts to heal their suffering." -Anni Bergman, coauthor of The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant

Lacan did not say or write very much about the psychoanalysis of children. There is no doctrine of the psychoanalysis of children in his work. Instead, his 1956-1957 seminar on 'the object relation' and his 'Note on the Child' of 1969 have been adopted by Lacanian analysts working with children as providing essential coordinates for direction in their clinical work. This book is the result of inviting psychoanalysts of the Lacanian orientation working with children around the globe to theorise and conceptualise that work. The Lacanian psychoanalyst works with the notion of the subject as a 'speaking being', but the child subject brings particular exigencies to the psychoanalytic work. Contributors attend to these exigencies in their essays by articulating the precise particularities of the direction of the treatment and psychoanalytic work with children.

Lacanian Psychoanalysis between the Child and the Other explores what topology can contribute to clinical work with children, emphasizing that psychoanalytic listening goes beyond the individuals who attend a session. This kind of listening does not seek for what is hidden inside; rather it seeks to create a continuous topological transformation, with topology regarded as the most sophisticated way in which structure, structuring and playing can be thought. Using Lacan’s theoretical framework, the book provides a new perspective on working with children, re-examining fundamental Lacanian concepts such as structure, subject, lack, Other, clinic and, of course, child itself. It charts how time and space are knitted together for children in psychoanalysis, and how a Lacanian approach can enable clinical practitioners and researchers to venture into cultures of childhood, helping them conceptualize and intervene in the process of knitting and unknotting. The book will be of interest to psychoanalytic child clinicians in practice and training, as well as researchers in the field of child psychoanalysis.

"Lacan did not say or write very much about the psychoanalysis of children. There is no doctrine of the psychoanalysis of children in his work. Instead, his 1956-1957 seminar on 'the object relation' and his 'Note on the Child' of 1969 have been adopted by Lacanian analysts working with children as providing essential coordinates for direction in their clinical work. This book is the result of inviting psychoanalysts of the Lacanian orientation working with children around the globe to theorise and conceptualise that work. The Lacanian psychoanalyst works with the notion of the subject as a 'speaking being', but the child subject brings particular exigencies to the psychoanalytic work. Contributors attend to these exigencies in their essays by articulating the precise particularities of the direction of the treatment and psychoanalytic work with children. Contributions consider and explore the effects of new technologies, bio-medicine, and the discourses of global capitalism and neo-liberalism upon the constitution of new child subjectivities and their correlative psychopathologies; inventions and reinventions of the role and function of the 'father'; the scope and value of differential diagnosis; the child as 'symptom' in and of 'the system'; and ultimately, guidelines for a specifically Lacanian direction of the treatment with children."--Provided by publisher.

Critically examines the theoretical approaches and clinical practices of psychoanalysts who have prevailed historically in the treatment of children: Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein and her school, D. W. Winnicott, Jacques Lacan, and Rosine and Robert Lefort. Rodriguez cofounded the Australian Centre for Psychoanalysis in the Freudian Field where he now heads the department. The revised doctoral dissertation (Monash University at an unspecified date) is distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This text is a major contribution to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis with children from a Lacanian perspective, and is the first of its kind in the English language. Here the theoretical approaches and clinical practices of the psychoanalysts that historically have prevailed in the field of psychoanalysis with children are critically examined: Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein and her school, DW Winnicott, Jacques Lacan, and Rosine and Robert Lefort. With more than twenty-five years of clinical experience with children and their parents, as well as research on psychoanalytic concepts and practical applications, the author also presents his views on a number of issues of crucial relevance for psychoanalytic theory and practice with children.

Contemporary psychodynamic theory profoundly impacts our understanding of the development of psychopathology in children and adolescents. This book creates new concepts derived from contemporary psychodynamic theory that necessitate a revision to the principles underlying our understanding of and approach to young patients in psychotherapy. Moreover, this book reviews recent contributions from contemporary two-person relational psychodynamic theory and makes use of detailed case examples to bring to life this theory’s practical applications in child and adolescent psychotherapy. Psychotherapists and students of psychotherapy will find this book a valuable source of information on contemporary psychodynamic theory and a useful resource for introducing a contemporary style into their practice, co-constructing with the patient a narrative to achieve the desired goals.