Development of Consciousness

Giampaolo Sasso is a practising psychotherapist and psychoanalytst living in Milan. He is a member of the Italian Society of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, which forms part of the European Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. He is also an linguist and has had a number of books published in Italy.

'Dr Sasso's book is a scholarly and creatively brave effort to bring together diverse areas of the human mind and its development, within an organising framework of introjective and projective processes. This book deserves to be read by anyone who seeks to find bridges between psychoanalysis and contemporary scientific accounts of the developing mind.'- Mary Target, PhD, Psychoanalyst and Clinical Psychologist. Reader in Psychoanalysis at University College, London'This book comes as a landmark. Sasso's work is extremely valuable for everybody wanting to think over possible points of convergence between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. This well-documented text addresses the complexity of this field and suggests a new model of brain growth that takes into account the psychic work of both the child and his/her carers. It touches especially upon the problems of the development of consciousness and the origins of language.'- Bernard Golse, Psychoanalyst and Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Paris'Infancy research and information from affective neuroscience and on dynamic brain functions active between subjects, require a new clinical theory of human minds and how they communicate. Giampaolo Sasso meets these challenges with a critique of Freud's ambitious and prophetic Project, and with a richly informed analysis of the "perceptual- motor properties of neural pathways". His fluent review, and his discussion of the psychology of parent-child relations and how they build a conscious personality, will be welcomed.'- Colwyn Trevarthen, Professor (Emeritus) of Child Psychology and Psychobiology, Department of Psychology, The University of Edinburgh

• Series Editors' Preface -- Introduction -- The cultural inheritance of Project for a Scientific Psychology -- Recent progress in the field of neuroscience -- The current idea of a child's mental development -- A new model of brain development -- Drive dynamics and maternal modulation -- Normal and pathogenic development of mother-child interaction -- Defence structures and the development of consciousness -- The origin of language -- Child development and the integration of psychoanalysis and neuroscience -- The unresolved problems of Freudian metapsychology -- Conclusion