Joan Symington is a child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. She was consultant Child Psychiatrist at the Royal Free Hospital, London, for ten years. Having trained at the British Psycho-Analytic Association, she now works in Sydney and is a training analyst of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society. She has published articles on infant observation and psychoanalysis and she is the co-author with her husband Neville of the book 'The Clinical Thinking of Wilfred Bion'.

• Introduction -- Moral imperatives in work with borderline children: the grammar of wishes and the grammar of needs -- Unconscious phantasy and knowledge: a case study -- Catastrophe, containment, and manic defences -- The significance of perversion: to prevent intimacy -- Shadow lives: a discussion of Reading in the Dark, a novel by Seamus Deane -- On using an alphabet: recombining separable components -- Some reflections on comparing obsessional neurosis and autism -- The anal organization of the instincts: a note on theories past and present -- When the bough breaks: working with parents and infants -- Observing babies and supporting the staff -- Projective identification: the analyst's involvement -- Psychic turbulence -- The concept of the envious/jealous superego -- Frozen pain

Joan Symington is a child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. She was consultant Child Psychiatrist at the Royal Free Hospital, London, for ten years. Having trained at the British Psycho-Analytic Association, she now works in Sydney and is a training analyst of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society. She has published articles on infant observation and psychoanalysis and she is the co-author with her husband Neville of the book 'The Clinical Thinking of Wilfred Bion'.

• Introduction -- Moral imperatives in work with borderline children: the grammar of wishes and the grammar of needs -- Unconscious phantasy and knowledge: a case study -- Catastrophe, containment, and manic defences -- The significance of perversion: to prevent intimacy -- Shadow lives: a discussion of Reading in the Dark, a novel by Seamus Deane -- On using an alphabet: recombining separable components -- Some reflections on comparing obsessional neurosis and autism -- The anal organization of the instincts: a note on theories past and present -- When the bough breaks: working with parents and infants -- Observing babies and supporting the staff -- Projective identification: the analyst's involvement -- Psychic turbulence -- The concept of the envious/jealous superego -- Frozen pain

Joan Symington is a child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. She was consultant Child Psychiatrist at the Royal Free Hospital, London, for ten years. Having trained at the British Psycho-Analytic Association, she now works in Sydney and is a training analyst of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society. She has published articles on infant observation and psychoanalysis and she is the co-author with her husband Neville of the book 'The Clinical Thinking of Wilfred Bion'.

• Introduction -- Moral imperatives in work with borderline children: the grammar of wishes and the grammar of needs -- Unconscious phantasy and knowledge: a case study -- Catastrophe, containment, and manic defences -- The significance of perversion: to prevent intimacy -- Shadow lives: a discussion of Reading in the Dark, a novel by Seamus Deane -- On using an alphabet: recombining separable components -- Some reflections on comparing obsessional neurosis and autism -- The anal organization of the instincts: a note on theories past and present -- When the bough breaks: working with parents and infants -- Observing babies and supporting the staff -- Projective identification: the analyst's involvement -- Psychic turbulence -- The concept of the envious/jealous superego -- Frozen pain