Relationships in Development

Stephen Seligman is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco; Joint Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Dialogues; Training and Supervising Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California; and Clinical Professor at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis. He is also co-editor of the American Psychiatric Press’ Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health: Core Concepts and Clinical Practice.

"Stephen Seligman’s new book is a valuable contribution to the psychoanalytic dialogue concerning developmental theory and its implications for analytic practice. His discussion of "relational-developmental psychoanalysis" is without parallel. It seems to me to pick up where Greenberg and Mitchell’s 1983 classic, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory, leaves off. He presents in a highly readable way a multi-disciplinary approach that includes direct infant observation, experience with patients in psychoanalysis, as well as social, historical and biological contributions. The result is a compelling study of twenty-first century psychoanalysis, which will enrich the perspectives of psychoanalysts and infant observers, as well as students of any field that takes as its object of study the human condition in all of its complexity."-Thomas H. Ogden, author most recently of Reclaiming Unlived Life: Experiences in Psychoanalysis and Creative Readings: Essays on Seminal Analytic Works."This is an outstanding book. It provides a masterly account of developments in psychoanalysis particularly in relation to its theories of childhood and development. The account leads toward relational analysis yet takes off in highly original directions in its discussion of the importance of puzzled and open attention and the implications for the development of the sense of time and of the future in patients filled with a sense of futility. The chapters on the link between temporality and intentionality are fascinating and need urgently to be read by all clinicians. The whole book is wonderfully clear in the way it links infant observation and psychoanalysis. It is also a great read."- Anne Alvarez, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist; retired Co-Convener of the Autism Service, Child and Family Dept., Tavistock Clinic, London; Honorary Member of the Psychoanalytic Centre of California.

• What to Expect from This Book; Introduction: Why Developmental Psychoanalysis? Part I: How We Got Here: A Roadmap to Psychoanalytic Theories of Childhood and Development 1. Childhood Has Meaning of Its Own: Freud and the Invention of Psychoanalysis 2. Theory I: Foreshadowings: Core Themes and Controversies in the Early Freudian Theories 3. The Baby at the Crossroads: The Structural Model, Ego Psychology, and Object Relations Theories 4. Theory II: What Is a "Robust Developmental Perspective?" 5. The Postwar Diversification and Pluralization of Psychoanalysis in the United States: Interdisciplinary Expansion, the Widening Clinical Scope and the New Developmentalism Part II: The Relational Baby: Intersubjectivity and Infant Development 6. Infancy Research: Toward a Relational-Developmental Psychoanalysis 7. Clinical Implications of Infancy Research: Affect, Interaction and Non-Verbal Meaning in the Dyadic Field 8. Theory III: The Relational Baby: Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique 9. Continuities from Infancy to Adulthood: The Baby is Out of the Bathwater 10. Theory IV: The Move to the Maternal: Gender, Sexualities, and the Oedipus Complex in Light of Intersubjective Developmental Research Part III: Attachment and Recognition in Clinical Process: Reflection, Regulation and Emotional Security 11. Intersubjectivity Today: The Orientation and Concept 12. Attachment Theory and Research in Context: Clinical Implications 13. Recognition and Mentalization in Infancy and Psychotherapy: Convergences of Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis 14. Mentalization and Metaphor, Acknowledgement and Grief: Forms of Transformation in the Reflective Space 15. Infant-Parent Interactions, Phantasies, and an "Internal Two-Person Psychology": Projective Identification and the Intergenerational Transmission of Early Trauma in Kleinian Theory and Intersubjective Infant Research Part IV: Vitality, Activity, and Communication in Development and Psychotherapy 16. Coming to Life in Time: Temporality, Early Deprivation, and the Sense of a Lively Future 17. Forms of Vitality and Other Integrations: Daniel Stern’s Contribution to the Psychoanalytic Core Part V: Awareness, Confusion and Uncertainty: Nonlinear Dynamics in Everyday Practice 18. Feeling Puzzled While Paying Attention: The Analytic Mindset as an Agent of Therapeutic Change 19. Dynamic Systems Theories as a Basic Framework for Psychoanalysis: Change Processes in Development and Therapeutic Action 20. Searching for Core Principles: Louis Sander’s Synthesis of Biological, Psychological, and Relational Factors and Contemporary Developmental Psychodynamics

1. 5/5

   Fullspäckat om utvecklingspsykologi

   Nutida forskning om spädbarn, anknytning, affektreglering, neurologi, m.m. pekar tydligt på de nära relationernas avgörande roll för vår psykiska utveckling. Stephen Seligman visar ett anmärkningsvärt stort och övergripande multidisciplinärt kunnande om spädbarnsobservation, kliniskt arbete med barn & vuxna, psykodynamisk teoribildning, historiska, sociala och biologiska faktorer. I detta integrativa arbete visar Seligman vad som är samstämmigt (och motstridande) inom utvecklingspsykologin, vilket utmynnar i det han kallar ett robust utvecklingsperspektiv. Kunskapsteoretiskt är psykoterapin bäst förankrad i den icke-linjära utvecklingssystemteorin (NLDS), menar Seligman. Seligman beskriver de teoretiska skillnaderna i "forskningsbabyn" och "den freudianska" "den kleinianska" "den winnikottska" och "den relationella" babyn Vilken kunskap om spädbarn är relevant för psykoterapin? Vilka är våra drivkrafter? Hur är balansen mellan verklighet och fantasi? Vad kan vi lära av spädbarnets icke-verbala tillvaro? Detta är frågor som Seligman diskuterar. En sällsynt fullspäckat och kunskapsdiger bok om utveclingspsykologi. Tomas Wånge relationell psykolog www.tomaswange.se

   Tomas W

   17 september 2018