THE ANALYST’S CONSULTING ROOM FOR CHILDREN, TEENAGERS AND ADULTS
In the last few years, the therapeutic task has changed, following Winnicott’s and above all Bion’s ideas. An increasing number of analysts now consider it to be based on the assumption that human beings develop through intersubjectivity and the capacity to create new meaning from emotional experiences. This natural process becomes particularly difficult when the emotional experiences are fragmented and confused by early trauma.
Some babies have difficulties in their early years, some mothers cannot look after their babies, and some caregivers can only provide very practical care, rather than emotional containment. Babies may have been born in a war zone, or they may suffer from traumas caused by neglect, incest, siblings, disabilities or migration.
How can we recover hope, emotional attunement and a way of being together and growing through understanding and containment?
The development of a new relationship between the therapist, the child and the child’s family may produce a new kind of listening and emotional attunement in the analytic field. Psychotherapists try to strengthen a psychic structure that was previously weak, inoperative or missing. Transformations may happen through the co-construction of new tools for feeling and thinking.
Therapists try to find the way to reach their patient, staying neither too close to, nor too far from where they actually are. Transformation can take place when the condition of unison is created, and this happens in a natural rhythm, through encounters, failures and adjustments. Children – and all human beings – have the incredible ability and potential to continue growing in a society that cares for them.
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A service provided by the Psychotherapy section of the Centro Benedetta d’Intino Onlus
LET’S TALK ABOUT IT TOGETHER
Becoming a parent is an extremely important experience that brings joy and excitement, but sometimes insecurity, hard work and loneliness.
LET’S TALK ABOUT IT TOGETHER is an occasion for parents to meet up and talk, where the skills they need to be a good parent, that they often already have without realising it, can be brought to the surface. The idea is to look for every possible point in common between mothers and fathers, the world of education, school and healthcare. The meetings aim to help parents work on their parenting skills together.
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FROM READING TO INVENTING STORIES: PSYCHODYNAMIC ORIENTED READING GROUPS WITH VERY YOUNG CHILDREN AND FAMILIES
Discovering how important reading aloud and inventing stories to children is, even when they are very young, and how much joy it brings.
Shared reading groups for parents and very young children
Reading short stories aloud to very young children and talking to them enthusiastically about the little things that happen day to day are important ways of nourishing their young minds. This storytelling helps them to learn, relate to others, get to know themselves, their parents and their brothers and sisters. It gives them the chance to work through different kinds of experiences – whether they be they happy, sad, difficult or confusing – and to find a rhythm for them by alternating between moments of fullness or emptiness.
This reading group experience started in the special library at the Centro Benedetta D’Intino, where it was called “Reading Together Aloud” and now it is spreading to other places around Italy and abroad. The book “A Sunny Day” is a tool that is particularly useful for parents as it helps them to make the transition from reading stories to their children to inventing them.
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TRAINING
- Training seminars about parent-infant psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and with parents and children from 0-5 years old. The seminars focus on the following topics: family psychotherapy with newborns, children and parents, methods and tools, communication and collaboration between the different professional figures involved (paediatricians, psychologists, midwives, nursery school and primary school teachers and services offered by the local authorities).
- “Balint group” style supervision for the following professional figures: paediatricians, GPs, paediatric oncologists, teachers and instructors. These meetings focus on discussion and continuous training to develop the skills needed to support the psychological, physical and emotional needs of children.
