Routledge Learning About Human Nature and Analytic Technique from Mothers and Babies

We have much to learn from mothers and babies, not just about early life psychic phenomena that are active in us, but also about the analytic technique, when the internal setting becomes more important than the analyst's interpretative capacity. The infant observation method is a useful tool for the refinement of psychoanalytic listening of primitive phenomena and for the development of the containment and receptive capacity in the analyst, or any professional who is dedicated to the early stages of development. This book is a living testimony of years of observation work with the Bick method, including pregnancy and delivery, and much more spent in the working through of this material, in these unforgettable - and usually inaccessible - first three years of life. Review "'This book enables us to learn what is happening to parents when they conceive a child and what happens to babies so dependent on their parents for compassionate comprehension, nurturance, love, and encouragement. Nara Amália Caron and Rita Sobreira Lopes are internationally renowned for their precise, deep, and poetic exposition of infantile states of mind. These six narratives of infants observed from the time of their conception until three years of age reaffirm the authors' capacity to sensitively describe the complexity of human encounters between the infant and the mother and father. This book is crucially important for parents and mental health professionals, for it brings refreshing new insights regarding the unique personality of each baby in the womb as well as revealing how actively the baby both influences and is influenced by the relationship with the parents. Convincing observations and commentaries enable clinicians to fine-tune their ability to observe and comprehend primitive psychic phenomena presented by people in the consulting room."-- (05/05/2017) "This book is essential reading for everyone interested in infant observation and its applications. Nara Amália Caron and Rita Sobreira Lopes are passionate about observation and its use in research in all kinds of places. These include ultrasound examinations with parents-to-be and their extended families, in the delivery room itself, and with babies who are not going to survive. In all settings, they are struck anew by the observers' painful, direct, primitive experience of what babies feel. Their training of and support for their observer-researchers takes them back to the originator of infant observation, Esther Bick, for whom, along with Donald Winnicott they have profound respect and gratitude. The authors' knowledge, particularly of places where 'verbalisation has no meaning' has inspired many future analytic practitioners and observer-researchers, and their devotion to discussing and publishing their findings is an inspiring gift to us all."-- (05/05/2017) About the Author Nara Amalia Caron