When A Child Has Been Abused: Towards Psychoanalytic Understanding And Therapy

When a Child Has Been Abused This important and wide-ranging book explores the world of a child or young person who has been abused or neglected. It seeks to understand their world, to ease the pain from which they suffer, and to heal the wounds that the abuse has left. Examining how abuse always takes place in the context of relationships, and involves a misuse of power that causes a traumatic overwhelming of the child or adolescent, abuse also evokes strong countertransference. This affects interventions, particularly when clinicians struggle with feelings of which they may feel ashamed. A difficulty in coming to terms with and addressing child abuse relates to unconscious factors which, by freezing the emotional area surrounding the abuse (or by blinding the area of personality), makes some thoughts unthinkable. Considering traditional and novel ways of helping children who feel they have been maltreated, the book offers suggestions for individual treatment as well as describing the successful work carried out with child refugees. It also offers a glimpse into what child psychoanalysts interpret and do with children who feel a parent hates them. Frances Thomson-Salo is Associate Professor and Consultant Infant Mental Health Clinician in the Centre for Women’s Mental Health at the Royal Women’s Hospital, Melbourne, Australia, Honorary Principal Fellow in the University of Melbourne’s Department of Psychiatry, and Instructor in the University of Melbourne Graduate Diploma/Masters in Infant and Parent Mental Health, Australia. Laura Tognoli Pasquali is a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association’s Committee on Women and Psychoanalysis and former training and supervising analyst in the Italian Psychoanalytical Society. Psychoanalysis and Women Series Series Editor: Frances Thomson-Salo Homosexualities: Psychogenesis, Polymorphism, and Countertransference Edited by Elda Abrevaya, Frances Thomson-Salo Myths of Mighty Women: Their Application in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Edited by Arlene Kramer Richards, Lucille Spira Medea: Myth and Unconscious Fantasy Edited by Esa Roos The Status of Women: Violence, Identity, and Activism Edited by Vivian B. Pender Changing Sexualities and Parental Functions in the Twenty-First Century: Changing Sexualities, Changing Parental Functions Candida Se Holovko, Frances Thomson-Salo The Courage to Fight Violence Against Women: Psychoanalytic and Multidisciplinary Perspectives Edited by Paula L. Ellman, Nancy R. Goodman When a Child is Abused: Towards Psychoanalytic Understanding and Therapy Edited by Frances Thomson-Salo, Laura Tognoli Pasquali For more information about this series, pleas