Psychodynamic Interventions in Pregnancy and Infancy Clinical and Theoretical Perspectives

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.

List of clinical cases Preface CLINIC: CONSULTATIONS AND THERAPIES AT A CHILD HEALTH CENTRE Chapter 1. In the beginning Chapter 2. The psychology of pregnancy Chapter 3. Circumventing primary maternal preoccupation Chapter 4. Delivery trauma and the maternal introject Chapter 5. Therapeutic technique in perinatal consultations Chapter 6. The external frame at the Child Health Centre Chapter 7 Supervising nurses at the Child Health Centre Chapter 8. The internal frame at the Child Health Centre Chapter 9. From panic to pleasure. Therapy with Debbie and Mae Chapter 10. Parent–infant psychotherapy: a review of clinical methods Chapter 11. Parent–infant psychotherapy: RCTs and follow-up studies Chapter 12: Brief interventions with parental couples – I Chapter 13: Brief interventions with parental couples – II Chapter 14. Extending the field to therapy with toddlers and parents THEORY: THE MIND OF THE BABY – CONTINUED INVESTIGATIONS Chapter 15. A baby’s mind: empirical observation versus speculative theorizing Chapter 16. Naming the nameless: on anxiety in babies – I: Freud Chapter 17. Naming the nameless: on anxiety in babies – II: after Freud Chapter 18. Babies and their defences Chapter 19. Metaphors in parent–infant therapy Chapter 20. A vision for the future

Björn Salomonsson, MD, is a psychiatrist and training and child psychoanalyst in Stockholm. His research at the Karolinska Institute concerns parent--infant psychoanalytic treatment and psychodynamic consultations at Child Health Centres, as well as the development of clinical practice and theory of such treatments. He is an internationally renowned lecturer on these and other topics in the field of psychoanalytic therapy.