Mary T. Brady – författare

In Psychoanalysis with Adolescents and Children: Learning to Surf, Mary T. Brady expertly guides the reader through the challenging and vital process of working with young analysands.

Brady likens the experience to ‘learning to surf.’ While finding Bion’s metaphor that the analyst must be able to ‘think under fire’ useful, she suggests ‘learning to surf’ is more apt in psychoanalysis with adolescents and children. Drawing on this metaphor throughout the volume, she describes how the adolescent can be potentially upended, injured or even killed by emotional waves too tumultuous to manage. Surfing also evokes the often uneasy but sometimes thrilling balances of adolescence. Using clinical vignettes from her extensive experience in the field, Brady explores how to work with young people experiencing issues such as eating disorders, gender challenges, parental substance abuse and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on Bionian Field Theory, as well as the work of Donald Winnicott, she explores how analysts can surf with the adolescent or child in navigating the ebb and flow of psychic life and development.

This book is essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, including psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and counselors, who treat children and adolescents.

In Psychoanalysis with Adolescents and Children: Learning to Surf, Mary T. Brady expertly guides the reader through the challenging and vital process of working with young analysands.

Brady likens the experience to ‘learning to surf.’ While finding Bion’s metaphor that the analyst must be able to ‘think under fire’ useful, she suggests ‘learning to surf’ is more apt in psychoanalysis with adolescents and children. Drawing on this metaphor throughout the volume, she describes how the adolescent can be potentially upended, injured or even killed by emotional waves too tumultuous to manage. Surfing also evokes the often uneasy but sometimes thrilling balances of adolescence. Using clinical vignettes from her extensive experience in the field, Brady explores how to work with young people experiencing issues such as eating disorders, gender challenges, parental substance abuse and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on Bionian Field Theory, as well as the work of Donald Winnicott, she explores how analysts can surf with the adolescent or child in navigating the ebb and flow of psychic life and development.

This book is essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, including psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and counselors, who treat children and adolescents.

In Analytic Engagements with Adolescents, Mary T. Brady takes on the intensity and ''heat'' of adolescent psychoanalytic treatment.She is a guide in the distinctive challenges of work with adolescents. The intensity of this work manifests in various ways; the heightened importance of body issues and related transference and countertransference, the subversiveness of risk-taking behavior and the rejection and rebellion against authority, and the effects of parental response and family dynamics.

Adolescence is a period when ''things happen'': first wet dreams, first menstruation, first romance. Nascent sexuality comes directly into the field as the adolescent is confronted with new bodily experiences. Subversiveness is integral to the adolescent’s development; parents (and analysts) are overthrown as the adolescent questions the status quo and experiments with new capacities and desires. Drawn into the adolescent’s turbulence, Bion’s concept of ''thinking under fire'' is shown to be vital to the analyst’s engagement. Bion’s group theory here informs Brady’s immediate experience of the interaction of individual and family dynamics.

The voices of Brady’s adolescent patients and her dynamic involvement with them will help the clinician to be open to the ''hot'' moments of their analytic work. Drawing on Bion’s thinking and her own extensive experience with adolescents, Brady offers an essential guide to the difficulties and challenges encountered when working with this patient group. She provides practical suggestions for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists working in this area.