Salomonsson Björn (ed.) Psychodynamic Interventions in Pregnancy and Infancy: Clinical and Theoretical Perspectives

Routledge, 2018. — 271 p.Psychodynamic Interventions in Pregnancy and Infancy builds on Björn Salomonsson’s experiences as a psychoanalytic consultant working with parents and their babies. Emotional problems during the perinatal stages can arise and be observed and addressed by a skilled midwife, nurse or health visitor.Salomonsson has developed a method combining nurse supervision and therapeutic consultations which has lowered the thresholds for parents to come and talk with him. The brief consultations concern pregnant women, mother and baby, husband and wife, toddler and parent. The theoretical framework is psychoanalytic, but the mode of work is eclectic and adapted to the family’s situation and its members’ motivation. This book details such work, which can be applied globally; perinatal psychotherapy integrated with ordinary medical health care. It also explains how psychotherapy can be made more accessible to a larger population.Via detailed case presentations, the author takes the reader through pregnancy, childbirth and the first few years of life. He also brings in research studies emphasizing the importance of early interventions, with the aim of providing therapists with arguments for such work in everyday family health care. To further substantiate such arguments, the book ends with theoretical chapters and, finally, the author’s vision of the future of a perinatal health care that integrates medical and psychological perspectives.Psychodynamic Interventions in Pregnancy and Infancy will appeal to all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists working in this area, as well as clinical psychologists, clinical social workers and medical personnel working with parents and infants.Clinic: Consultations and therapies at a Child Health Centre
n the beginning
The psychology of pregnancy
Circumventing primary maternal preoccupation
Delivery trauma and the maternal introject
Therapeutic technique in perinatal consultations
The external frame at the Child Health Centre
Supervising nurses at the Child Health Centre
The internal frame at the Child Health Centre
From panic to pleasure. Therapy with Debbie and Mae
Parent–infant psychotherapy: a review of clinical methods
Parent–infant psychotherapy: RCTs and follow-up studies
Brief interventions with parental couples – I
Brief interventions with parental couples – II
Extending the field to therapy with toddlers and parents
Theory: the mind of the baby – continued investigations
A baby’s mind: empirical observation versus speculative theorizing
Naming the nameless: on anxiety in babies – I: Freud
Naming the nameless: on anxiety in babies – II: after Freud
Babies and their defences
Metaphors in parent–infant therapy
A vision for the future