Spiweb Debate on Child Psychoanalysis 3 X
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
1 www.spiweb.it THEORETICAL-CLINICAL DEBATES THE MANY BRANCHES OF CHILD PSYCHOANALYSIS (coordinated by Francesco Carnaroli and Marco Mastella) From September 15, 2012 until January 15, 2013 - INDEX OF THE TRANSLATED COMMENTS 2 - PAPER by MARTA BADONI: Children and Treatment 4 - PAPER by TONIA CANCRINI: Children in Analysis. Primitive Anguish and Profound Ties 9 - DEBATE 16 COMMENTS by Adela Abella , Marta Badoni , Giuliana Barbieri , Daniele Biondo , Carla Busato Barbaglio , Tonia Cancrini , Paola Catarci , Laura Colombi , Carmelo Conforto , Barbara Cupello Castagna , Laurent Danon-Boileau , Franco De Masi , Liliana Ferrero , Maria Paola Ferrigno , Anna Ferruta , Elena Fieschi Viscardi , Mirella Galeota , Florence Guignard , Ana Kaplan , Lidia Leonelli Langer , María Mabel Levi , Sandra Maestro , Paola Marion , Marco Mastella , Marisa Melega , Anna Migliozzi , Elena Molinari , Anna Maria Nicolò , Irenea Olivotto , Paola Orofino , Valdimiro Pellicanò , Fiorella Petrì , Barbara Piovano , Cristina Ricciardi , María Sánchez Grillo , Elsa Schmid-Kitsikis , Daniela Scotto di Fasano , Sarantis Thanopulos , Luca Trabucco , Gemma Trapanese , Ana Fleischer de Trenes , Virginia Ungar , Dina Vallino , Adamo Vergine - REFERENCES 173 2 INDEX OF THE COMMENTS Adamo Vergine, Infant analysis or a particular kind of mind analysis 16 Marco Mastella, To the child never analyzed and the analyst he never had 17 Dina Vallino, Working with children and parents in the consulting room 19 Giuliana Barbieri, Girls and Boys 22 Barbara Piovano, The Parent as the Best Colleague of the Child Analyst 26 Sandra Maestro, A short Note 29 Paola Catarci, How we work with children 30 Laura Colombi, Contributions of child psychoanalysis to the widening of understanding and care of primitive dys-functioning also in adult patient. 31 Liliana Ferrero, Comment on the intervention by Barbara Piovano 35 Elena Molinari, Communicating paintings 36 Paola Orofino, Taking to the streets: psychoanalysis in local area facilities 38 Marisa Melega, Response to Barbara Piovano’s intervention 41 Irenea Olivotto, Questions of Plasticity 42 Giuliana Barbieri, Girls and Boys n. 2 43 Adamo Vergine, “When the child was a child, it did not know that it was a child” 45 Franco De Masi, A Silent Change? 47 Anna Ferruta, On Child and Adolescent Training Program 48 Marisa Melega, Answer to De Masi from Marisa Melega 50 Maria Paola Ferrigno, Children, parents and adults in the analysis room 52 Barbara Piovano, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Children with Severe Pathologies. Answer to De Masi 54 Marco Mastella, “Come color che son sospesi” (As those who are suspended): between environment, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis 57 Franco De Masi, Answer to Mastella 61 Daniela Scotto di Fasano, In the Distant Far West 62 Laura Colombi, Case and Therapeutic Intervention Specificity 65 Adela Abella, Respecting the child’s individuality in psychoanalysis 67 Sarantis Thanopulos, Children Psychoanalysis and the Future of Psychoanalytic Research 69 Paola Marion, One or two points on the specificity of child analysis 70 Anna Migliozzi, Psychoanalysis of Children, or only Psychoanalysis? 72 Carmelo Conforto, Taking a cue from Thanopulos 74 Tonia Cancrini, Some Considerations on the Papers 74 Fiorella Petrì, The Child Within The Adult 78 Luca Trabucco, About prematurity. Echoing the comments of Thanopulos and Conforto 82 Daniele Biondo, Make sense to the senses, give body to the mind 83 Marta Badoni, “Take off your hat and... speak softly” 89 Mirella Galeota, Mother in the waiting room 92 Sarantis Thanopulos, The Child in the Adult, the Archaic and the Infantile 94 Dina Vallino, Further Points for Thought 95 Paola Orofino, The child who can no longer be found in the adult, and some reflections on training 97 Lidia Leonelli Langer, Please don't talk ….! Let’s make everything dark! 98 Barbara Cupello Castagna, Infant and Young Child Observation 100 Ana Kaplan, Present perspectives in the analysis of children. The position of analysts of children in today’s clinic. When the children analyst changes his place . 102 Elsa Schmid-Kitsikis, The Infantile and the Elaboration of Dreams in Children 108 3 María Mabel Levi, Some comments on the works by Dina Vallino and Barbara Piovano. 112 Ana Fleischer de Trenes, Marcos, 9 years old 114 Florence Guignard, Interpretation across the age range 121 Virginia Ungar, Psychoanalytic method: permanence and change in clinical practice with children 127 Gemma Trapanese, Family takes the field 131 Daniela Scotto di Fasano, Family Members in Therapy: “Obstacles” or “Colleagues” for the Analyst? 135 Valdimiro Pellicanò, To care the baby taking care of the parents / to care the parents taking care of the baby 143 Cristina Ricciardi, Couple's Psychoanalysis: Why Not? 144 María Sánchez Grillo, Playing and “enactment” in Psychoanalysis of children 147 Anna Maria Nicolò, On Psychoanalysis with the Couple and the Family: Another Point of View 154 Laurent Danon-Boileau, Preserving the Pleasure in Jewelry 158 Elena Fieschi Viscardi, Without Words 161 Carla Busato Barbaglio, Inside the relationship without reservations 163 Barbara Piovano, Parallel psychotherapy with mother and child 165 Marta Badoni, Third and last writing 167 Tonia Cancrini, Some considerations on the debate 170 4 Marta Badoni Children and Treatment Towards the end of the 1960s, I was finishing my studies in Internal Medicine and had been living for some years in Lausanne which was, at that time, a dynamic center both for psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Three psychoanalysts, who left us with important traces of their work, directed the university academic services dedicated respectively to the psychiatric Hospital, Psychosocial Center and Child and Adolescent service. They were none other than Christian Muller, Pierre Bernard Schneider and René Henny. One evening, I heard a lecture at the psychiatric hospital regarding the analysis of a child. While the lecturer was projecting the child’s drawings, I remember being extremely impressed by the ease in which he went back and forth from the drawing's contents to the unconscious functioning of his little patient. Everything seemed extraordinarily clear and so easily accessible. The experience fascinated me and started me down a path that would revolutionize my life. I promptly left internal medicine and became interested in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. I wanted to start an internship at the university academic service that dealt with children and adolescents, but Dr. Henny told me that before working with children it was advisable to start working with adults. Therefore, I began an internship in the psychiatric hospital for adults. I was given a schizophrenic patient and a supervisor: I learned a lot. I did not know it back then, but in these first few steps I came in direct contact with two great themes of child psychoanalysis. The first theme has to do with the relative ease of directly accessing their unconscious (but is it theirs or ours?). Actually, this brings with it one of the major risks and challenges for the psychoanalyst who deals with children: that is the risk of contaminating the child’s mind with his own unconscious content or, on the contrary, defending himself from the violence of this content with what is nothing more than an adult resistance of his own unknown “infantile” part, commonly known as a "brilliant interpretation". The second theme is that the child assumes the existence of an adult who has brought him into the world ... "before the adults". The child needs his parents not only for the safety of his life, but as a guarantee of his growth and mental development. Later, when I actually started working for the academic service for children and adolescents (I stayed there for about four years before returning to Italy), I took note of a another theme. Given the incompleteness of the child, the work with him or for him assumes that the analyst's mind is able to take on a group dimension: once again, it’s not just dealing with ghosts, but real presences that have a powerful impact on the mental development of the child himself. The psychoanalyst who treats a child, therefore, plays a delicate and complex game linked to factors that influence each other reciprocally. The stage reached by a child in his development and the quality of the family and non-family environment compete in either promoting treatment or making it difficult (sometimes to the point of discouraging it.). The child analyst knows this all too well, but it is in this area that she/he is called to do her first exercise in abstinence. She/He must avoid, on the one hand, the temptation of having omnipotent control over the environment, and, on the other hand, the fascination in considering herself above these dynamics as if she/he were the bearer of a unique, special, and lifesaving message. Whenever possible, she/he will try to interact with the environment and work to transform it. This leads to a further complication in child analysis: the indications (which are also quite neglected for adults, nowadays, too). Not all of a child's symptoms require analysis, even though they often require sophisticated analytical competence to act upon. The recent debate on autism has shown just how complex and multifaceted working with children is. Last but not least: the child for whom help is asked is often the ambassador of a family problem for which he bears the brunt of the pain and punishment. What are the analyst's tools to alleviate these? 5 For all of these reasons, I have called my paper: Children and Treatment. It is inspired by the beautiful book by Laurence Kahn (Kahn, 2004), but it is also a grateful tribute to my training itinerary. The path I took taught me not only the theoretical and clinical work as an analyst, but the deep ethical meaning behind taking care of someone: not only the constant refinement of one’s own therapeutic tools, but a deeper questioning of their usefulness and possible use for a given patient at any time, in any situation.