Psychoanalysis and Developmental Therapy

Many books have recently appeared on a variety of psychoanalytic topics, but relatively few have dealt specifically with problems of technique and with the theory that informs those techniques. It is therefore particularly fortunate that this book does just that.

The central and greater part of the book consists of a series of detailed descriptions of clinical work with children. The authors have something in common, all have trained wholly or in part at the Anna Freud Centre. They have been guided in their understanding of their patients' problems by a fundamentally psychoanalytic orientation in which the role of internal conflicts, anxiety, guilt, love and hate, primitive as well as more sophisticated object relations, and a complex variety of defenses take a central place. They have also been influenced by their knowledge of normal development and their awareness of the pathological consequences of uneven or faulty development. Their psychoanalytic technical approach has been influenced by recent advances in our understanding of development, in particular of the nature of infant attachment, of the vicissitudes of attunement between mother and baby and their consequences, and of the vital importance of mentalization and the reflective function.