Elusive Child

Lesley Caldwell is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Association in private practice in London. She is an Honorary Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit and Honorary Senior Research Associate in the Italian Department at University College, London. As Chair of the Squiggle Foundation (2000-2003) and editor of the 'Winnicott Studies Monograph Series' (2000-2008), she published four edited collections on D. W. Winnicott. She has been an editor for the Winnicott Trust since 2002 and was the Chair of Trustees from 2008-2012. She has a continuing interest in psychoanalysis and the arts and has also written on film and the city of Rome.

This broad-ranging and provocative collection of papers, a volume in the Winnicott Studies Monograph Series, focuses on all factors pertaining to the child and childhood, including the role that psychoanalysis has to play. The book offers a unique and fascinating understanding of developmental issues from early infancy through latency and into adolescence from various psychoanalytic approaches. The papers, written by experts in the field - including Alain Vanier, Catherine Mathelin, Abrahao Brafman and Monica Lanyado - examine closely all aspects of this fascinating subject from Freud to Winnnicott; from neo-natal care to adolescence. The contributors take into account issues such as fostering and adoption, vital scrutiny of the role of the family, and presentation of children in the media while all the time asking the salient question, "What is a child?"

• Introduction , From Freud to Winnicott: an encounter between mythical children , Early emotional development: Ferenczi to Winnicott , Infant observation: what do you see? , Defects of inscription in language: Anne and Anna , Creating transitions in the lives of children suffering from multiple traumatic loss , Prince Blackthorn and the Wizard: fantasying and thinking in the psychoanalysis of a ten-year-old boy , Some remarks on adolescence with Winnicott and Lacan , A Winnicottian view of an American tragedy , ’’I like my life, I just like my life’’: narratives of children of latency years , Winnicott and music*