Review of Saying goodbye: A casebook of termination in child and adolescent analysis and therapy.

Reviews the book, Saying goodbye: A casebook of termination in child and adolescent analysis and therapy edited by A. G. Schmukler. This is a puzzling, intriguing, and evocative book. I was pleasantly surprised to read a book about child analysis--albeit how to end the process with children. This is an important book for clinicians. Notwithstanding this reviewer's expectations to determine the differences between psychotherapy and analysis and when and where to apply them, we are given the vicissitudes of this very vulnerable enterprise of the therapeutic intervention and what is terminable in this process. Its contribution is substantial in understanding developmental growth, individuation, and our vulnerabilities. The authors have given us a justifiable use of psychoanalysis with children and adolescents that serves as a counterpoint to the problems inherent in managed mental health and the need for a pluralistic delivery system. Overall, this is a worthy book in the teaching and in the doing of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interview with Anni Bergman.

Anni Bergman is among a cadre of child analysts who entered into the field after many years of educational work with children. Before her training in child therapy, she taught music, directed a school orchestra, and co-authored a book on how to teach very young children to play the recorder. Her psychoanalytic work, spanning more than two decades, considers abnormal processes within the context of typical developmental patterns. Karen Roser (KR), a doctoral candidate and beginning student of psychoanalysis, interviewed her former teacher of play therapy and supervisor at the City University Child Center to gather insights into the past and present of child analytic work and some intimate details of her association with Margaret Mahler. Excerpts from the interview with Anni Bergman (AB) follow. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of A child analysis with Anna Freud.

Reviews the book, A child analysis with Anna Freud by Peter Heller (see record 1990-97274-000). The tension between remembering and forgetting is the daily experience of the psychoanalyst. This takes place not only in the consulting room, but applies to our sense of ourselves and the history of psychoanalysis. Anna Freud died in October 1982. For almost 60 years she had been the heir apparent and then the leader of the international psychoanalytic movement. Yet, not even 10 years after her death, her name seems to have disappeared from psychoanalytic discourse and the contributions of her work and of child analysis to the body of psychoanalytic theory and technique are not discussed. As much as one can learn about the history of child analysis from this book, one must bear in mind the peculiar circumstances surrounding Peter Heller's analysis. Five of his classmates, including his future wife, and his teacher were also in analysis with Anna Freud. He vacationed with the Burlinghams and Anna Freud and wished to have Dorothy Burlingham as his mother. Peter's nanny later became a psychoanalyst and there was talk of Peter's father marrying Anna Freud. Given the multiplicity and complexity of these interrelationships, how could a termination have taken place? This book may be Peter Heller's continuation of his analysis, the exercise of his self-analytic function, and thus finally a termination of his child analysis with Anna Freud. In sharing his termination with us, Peter Heller gives us access to important aspects of our own history and so enables us to shape our future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Countertransference in psychotherapy with children and adolescents.

Reviews the book, Countertransference in psychotherapy with children and adolescents edited by Jerrold R. Brandell (see record 1992-97833-000). Books on child analytic work are rare, and books on countertransference in child treatment are basically nonexistent, despite the proliferation of writing on countertransference in work with adults. Thus, Jerrold Brandell's edited volume is a welcome and long-overdue addition to the literature. Although the book is not strictly about analysis, it is analytically informed. Brandell's stated goal is to advance the principle that "countertransference is a ubiquitous factor in child and adolescent treatment, and that its recognition, understanding, and management are essential to effective psychotherapy." This is indeed a worthy if not essential undertaking, and the collection of articles in Brandell's book advances this goal. Brandell prefaced the chapters with his own thorough historical literature review of countertransference in both adult and child work. He then subdivided the book into two sections, with the first containing two classic articles an countertransference and the bulk of the book devoted to the following "scientific situations" in child psychotherapy: racial and cultural issues, depressed and suicidal children and adolescents, infant-family treatment, severely disturbed adolescents, eating disorders, abused children and adolescents, parent loss and divorce, borderline children and adolescents, life-threatening illness, and substance-abusing adolescents. This book is a very good resource for child analysts and therapists, especially those who espouse a more relational or intersubjective point of view. It is suitable both for inexperienced analysts and as a reminder to more seasoned ones of the importance and pervasiveness of countertransference issues in our work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The times, they are a changing: A review of Raising children in a socially toxic environment.

Reviews the book, Raising children in a socially toxic environment by J. Gabarino (1995). In this book, Garbarino sets out to offer his views on what childhood ought to be, how children map their own worlds (thus define, themselves), what their basic needs are, the levels in which those needs are being met, as well as offer suggestions for ways in which readers can change the "toxic environment" to aid in the healthy development of children and youth. The book is challenging to read because it is true. Although the pages are not replete with "hard data," they are filled with factual accounts that paint a discouraging, in fact depressing picture of the life of children in our communities. The book is powerful because, if successful, we are forced to accept the fact that this is American society today. There is no question that the issues articulated by Garbarino in this book, such as teenage homicide, gang warfare, domestic violence, and child abuse, are real. The influences of Urie Bronfenbrenner (1977) and ecological systems theory provide the conceptual framework for this book. Accordingly, development is the result of complex interactions among child and family systems and the social environment in which they function. Related to the ecological orientation is the notion that "it takes a village" to effect change. In other words, there is an implicit message that successful, healthy childrearing is the shared responsibility of individuals, groups, communities, external forces, and broad-based sanctions and regulations. As such, readers who take this book seriously will be forced to look at it not only as a professional resource with "good information," but as a call to accept a role for working within their individual and community contexts to influence change. Although the book falls short in providing concrete directives for change, it sends a strong message that we are all responsible, and a more subtle message that change is possible. If each and every reader could make one or two changes in their own behaviors and priorities as an outcome of reading this book, it will have served an invaluable service. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Beyond the reflection: The role of the mirror paradigm in clinical practice.

Reviews the book, Beyond the reflection: The role of the mirror paradigm in clinical practice by Paulina Kernberg, Bernadette Buhl-Nielsen, and Lina Normandin (see record 2007-00911-000). This modestly presented volume overflows with insight and new ways of looking at the mirroring experience for children and adolescents. Kernberg and her collaborators present the rich history of the image, metaphor, and pervasive role of the mirror in human experience; they carefully describe the "subjective experience of wonder, admiration, and an objective dimension of truth" in the mirror paradigm (2006, p. xv). For the psychotherapist, Kernberg's work provides a rich resource; the review of past and current research and theorizing about the mirroring function of mothers and primary caregivers is thorough and up-to-date with the most recent advances in neuroscience, attachment theory, and infant research. From Freud to Lacan, from Winnicott to Stern, and from Schore to Gergely, Kernberg presents a sweeping exposition of the various images of the mirror. This volume is worthwhile if only for its presentation of this body of recent research. But there is so much more to be found here. While this is not the first time that Kernberg has presented us with her work with mirror observation and interviews (Kernberg, 1984, 1987), this volume integrates the research about early mother- child experience, and the mirroring paradigm in the psychoanalytic theories about child development, with the phenomenology of child and adolescent psychotherapy. The clinician will find a useful application of the theory to clinical practice and diagnosis that is hard to find in the literature. Beebe and Lachmann (2002) have accomplished this integration between infant research and adult treatment, but Kernberg's application of her research and the demonstrated correlation between the findings of mirror experience, attachment histories, and clinical experience is a rare and welcome addition to the literature. There are also valuable links made between the findings around mirror experience and children's trauma histories. This reader came away feeling that a tremendous debt is owed to the authors for helping to ground clinical theory and practice in substantial current research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Canadian Children's Law: Cases, Notes and Materials.

Reviews the book, Canadian Children's Law: Cases, Notes and Materials by Nicholas Bala, Heino Lilies, and George Thomson (1982). This book contains a collection of articles, legal decisions, and comments on significant issues in relation to children. The authors divide the table of contents into two major groupings: Part I deals with child welfare and Part II deals with juvenile offenders. This book does not attempt to be exhaustive. For example, it does not cover legislation in other provinces, and the excerpts of articles are often too short to give an in-depth discussion of the issues. However, its greatest value is in raising questions that all mental health professionals should discuss within their own profession and with the legal profession and the judiciary so that a better working relationship can be achieved. I would recommend this book to all psychologists who arc involved in child welfare or delinquency matters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Middle-class waifs. The psychodynamic treatment of affectively disturbed children.

Reviews the book, Middle-class waifs. The psychodynamic treatment of affectively disturbed children by Elaine V. Siegel (see record 1991-98014-000). Most of this book is devoted to case histories of children and their parents who have relatively severe emotional problems yet can be sufficiently responsive to psychotherapy so that positive changes occur. Particularly impressive are the ways in which the author, in her therapeutic role, overcomes the resistances presented by both children and parents. She is clearly an excellent therapist, who would probably be effective regardless of orientation, and her manner of working with people has applicability for all psychotherapists. Her appreciation of the necessary balance in understanding the needs of children and their parents is an exemplary model of what it really means to respect the personhood of patients. One of the intriguing possibilities in this book is the case that is made for the broad applicability of psychoanalytic theory and treatment. During a time in which psychodynamic work is being criticized as taking too long, costing too much, and producing too little, the author offers quite a convincing demonstration of its value. The negative consequences of increased disparagement of this approach are also made apparent, so that a definite step is taken to restore the worth of treatment options. Any limitations of this book are minor, relative to the excellent portrayal of the process of psychotherapy with difficult patients that too often frighten or overwhelm people who could help them if the helpers would let themselves discover how. This work by a master clinician definitely points the way. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Termination conceivable and inconceivable.

Suggests that psychoanalysts seem to have deep-seated resistances to thinking about termination in a way that promotes clinical and scientific growth and focuses on the factors in the analyst that make termination inconceivable. Factors influencing obstacles to conceiving of termination are examined including aspects in the history of psychoanalysis, the theoretical models held by analysts, and the kind of termination experience analysts themselves have had. It is argued that major sources of analytic resistance to termination issues lie in several areas including: analysts' failure to acknowledge mismanagement of termination by the psychoanalytic pioneers, the unexamined repetition of past technical errors (e.g., forced terminations), the denial that analysts also have reactions to the loss of a patient, and the denial that strongly held psychoanalytic models will influence what emerges and what is attended to during termination. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Handbook of play therapy, volume 2: Advances and innovations.

Reviews the book, Handbook of play therapy, volume 2: Advances and innovations by Kevin J. O'Connor and Charles E. Schaefer (1994). This book offers a collection of chapters written by leading experts which addresses the developments in play therapy since 1983. In completing the volume, Editors Kevin J. O'Connor and Charles E. Schaefer sought to offer a multi-disciplinary approach to play therapy. Additionally, the editors stated in their preface that they worked to make this new volume "informative, thought provoking, and clinically useful." Indeed, the editors have succeeded admirably in achieving their stated objectives. The book's organization and emphasis on clinical relevance make it a fit companion to their earlier classic (Schaefer & O'Connor, 1983). The Handbook is very well-organized with an excellent selection of chapter topics. The chapters follow essentially the same format and are integrated well within the book. The editors deserve credit for synthesizing diverse theoretical approaches and techniques into a coherent whole. The individual chapters are clearly written and quite readable. The figures and tables are readily understandable and augment the chapters' content. Clinicians and researchers interested in play therapy and child psychotherapy will enjoy this volume. Although the majority of chapters discuss play therapy with children, two chapters discuss play therapy applications with adults. Accordingly, therapists interested in these approaches will profit from this work. The volume certainly appeals to multi-disciplinary audiences such as psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, nurses, pastoral counselors, and educators. The text is extremely appropriate for a graduate course in play therapy. Finally, the book can be read from beginning to end or the reader can select particular chapters in the handbook and sample various clinical approaches. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Bodies in treatment: The unspoken dimension.

Reviews the book, Bodies in treatment: The unspoken dimension by Frances Sommer Anderson (see record 2007-07946-000). In this book, the author aims to move talk and body therapists closer to one another, so that each appreciates the narrative and the visceral and so that, together, they can care for patients as wholly as possible. Body therapists consider the body to be a rich source of information, with the potential to facilitate regulation and reorganization of emotional states, explains William Cornell, in his chapter “Self in Action: The Bodily Basis of Self-Organization.” Specifically, body therapists ask patients to verbalize their physical sensations, to notice and to change their breathing, to adjust their posture. Sometimes body therapists touch patients to better sense and to reconfigure troubled parts of the body. These techniques aim to heed, deepen, and even change experiences at the level of the body. Despite this book’s imperfect cohesion and inconsistent strength (both common in edited books), it succeeds strongly in bringing needed attention to a dimension of treatment that has been largely ignored, and sometimes exploited, by therapists. This book will be of particular interest to clinicians (from graduate students in the field to seasoned analysts) who treat patients with eating disorders and/or trauma histories, patients who somatize, and patients who suffer from chronic illnesses. Francis Sommer Anderson is brave to have written about the ways her own profession of talk therapy failed to touch and heal some aspects of her patients, and some aspects of herself. The authors of her volume all contribute—most, very creatively and innovatively; some, eccentrically—to Anderson’s aim of including bodies in treatment and of healing patients as completely as possible. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Self inquiry.

Reviews the book, Self inquiry by M. Robert Gardner (1983). Gardner's fundamental insight is "that the psychoanalyst's main aim, now as in Freud's time, is, or might well be, to advance his or her own self inquiry to help his or her patients to advance their self inquiry to help him or her to advance his or hers. And so on. And so on" (pp. 7-8). Consequently, one of his key concepts, when describing the psychoanalytic work, is mutuality. It should be noted that what Gardner terms "self inquiry" is a rather humble activity, whether it is carried out by analysts or other human beings. Still, this kind of humble activity is ubiquitous, unavoidable, and pervasive. Self inquiry turns out to be written by a psychoanalyst of the purest water, in spite of the author's unconventional way of reasoning. I think that most experienced analysts will find such paradoxical formulations provocative but, above all, profoundly true. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ann Magaret Garner (1916–2010).

Ann Magaret Garner, a former professor of medical psychology at Oregon Health Sciences University, died in Lake Oswego, Oregon, on August 30, 2010. Ann was a preeminent scholar, teacher, and clinician. Through her commanding knowledge of child psychopathology and insistence on rigorous scientific methods, she helped shape the specialties of clinical child psychology and developmental disabilities; through her warm compassion and respect for others, she helped shape the careers of many students and colleagues. Born Gretchen Ann Magaret on January 25, 1916, in Omaha, Nebraska, she received her bachelor’s degree from Carleton College, her master’s degree from Radcliffe College, and her doctorate from Stanford University (1941). A profound intellectual curiosity and passion for the science of psychology characterized her work. Her guidance, clear thinking, and precision of measurement pushed students and colleagues to refine and clarify their own thinking and practices. Colleagues recall how Ann maintained boundaries of professional and personal life for herself and expected the same from others, to their betterment. Her pleasure in her own family was evident in the ways she organized her work schedule and in her enjoyment of her husband Ross (professor of Renaissance English) and their children Margaret and David. Leisure was an important part of her life—playing music with her children when they were younger and tennis with her husband well into her senior years. Ann Magaret Garner will long be remembered for influencing the way in which psychologists think about variations in child development and the role of family in shaping the individual. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The uprooted: A Hitler legacy.

Reviews the book, The uprooted: A Hitler legacy by Dorit Bader Whiteman (1993). This book is a documentary about the lives of Jewish escapees from Germany and Austria during the Nazi regime. Based on responses to an extensive questionnaire, the author recounts numerous stories of survivors living all over the world. Whiteman, a refugee herself, writes both as researcher and survivor. This is a bittersweet mixture of sadness, ghoulish nightmares, and survival of the Kinder (children) whose parents unselfishly sent their children to other lands to avoid the tyranny and oppression of Hitler. Whiteman's writing style is comfortable and easy to read. She uses many quotations from the respondents. Her awareness of their plight is clear in her translations of their answers. Without question, The uprooted: A Hitler legacy makes an important point about human resiliency. The citation of the various stories serves as tribute to the survivors and their kin who perished. Although the text is noteworthy, it is difficult to conceive of it as an assistance or teaching tool for the trauma therapist. Clients mired in their own pain look for work that speaks in their voice—fear, anger, emptiness, and hopelessness. They seek treatment, at times, believing that nothing can help them escape their wounds yet knowing that without help the pain may destroy their will to survive. This book describes courage and triumph yet quiets the inner thoughts and feelings of the survivor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Parenting Assessments in Child Welfare Cases: A Practical Guide.

In this article the author provides a review of the book by Terry Pezzot-Pearce and John Pearce. The author states that this book sets out to fulfil four major goals: 1) presenting a model for comprehensive parenting assessments; 2) setting out the practical steps to be taken in such assessments; 3) identifying potential errors in carrying out assessments; and 4) providing critical considerations, identified by the authors as "practice alerts." The reviewer believes these goals are fulfilled in exhaustive fashion, thus providing a comprehensive text for those called upon to make such complex judgments. In fact, the reviewer suggests that the book could be titled a practical and theoretical guide for parenting assessments in child welfare and in consideration of custody and access decision-making. A refrain throughout the book is the reminder that the central question in parenting assessments is: Can this parent meet the needs of this particular child? Once this is understood then the complexity of the work becomes apparent. The author presents strengths, weaknesses, and a summary of the book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

From Voyeur to Witness: Recapturing Symbolic Function After Massive Psychic Trauma.

Survivors of massive psychic trauma frequently experience deficits in symbolic functioning affecting the capacity to dream and to think productively. Clinicians working with survivors also find themselves struck thoughtless, unable to reflect on the horrors their patients describe. The writer argues that experiencing an initial state of incoherence might be a necessary condition of the healing process when analysts work with this population. It is in the struggle to overcome this state and to become thinking professionals again that they can start to bear witness to the patient's experience. And it is through this work with the analyst's containing presence that the survivor ceases to be a mute observer to her own loss, starts to recapture her thinking self, and begins the process of witnessing her own survival. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Parent-child interaction therapy.

Reviews the book, Parent-child interaction therapy by Tom L. Hembree-Kigin and Cheryl Bodiford McNeil (see record 1995-98294-000). This book outlines an important, relatively new behavior therapy method with children called Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). PCIT is a technique that explicitly aims at developing mutual parent and child skills in an affectionate relationship, while retaining the traditional emphasis upon positive social behaviors and (mostly) noncoercive disciplinary efforts. According to the reviewer, the authors have done a very sound job of producing a helpful manual that points in advance to the resolution of common problems in dealing with behaviorally disturbed children and their parents. Although there are some caveats, this book important contribution to the child treatment literature will be beneficial to psychotherapists of all persuasions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Rochester Symposium on Developmental Psychopathology, Volume 3: Models and integrations.

Reviews the book, Rochester Symposium on Developmental Psychopathology, Volume 3: Models and integrations by Dante Cicchetti and Sheree L. Toth (1991). Cicchetti and Toth's Models and integrations is the third of five volumes issuing from the annual "Rochester Symposium on Developmental Psychopathology," a series of publications which has served to define the discipline. The current volume plays a pivotal role in the evolution of developmental psychopathology because it raises important theoretical questions about the discipline, not the least of which are what is it and what might it be? In challenging the conceptual strength and clarity of the field, the book addresses salient developmental issues that will need to be resolved if the discipline is to advance. This is a thought-provoking and intellectually challenging book. It contains 11 weighty chapters organized into three relatively distinct but overlapping sections: (1) theoretical issues, (2) models for understanding specific forms of child psychopathology, and (3) developmentally-grounded intervention strategies. Each chapter in this book demonstrates an extraordinarily high level of theoretical and methodological sophistication. Collectively, the chapters in this volume constitute one of the most informative and sophisticated discussions of theory and methodology in the field of developmental psychopathology that is currently available. This volume is an outstanding contribution to the field and is highly recommended reading for advanced students and researchers in the areas of developmental and child psychopathology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Introduction.

The editor of this special issue on child analytic work briefly characterizes the focus of the included works. This special issue on child analytic work contains articles on child psychoanalysis, childhood play, the role of the parent in child work, and the analytic process. Two book reviews complete the picture. Child psychoanalysis richly rewards us and stimulates us toward continuous exploration, development, and understanding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)