1st Edition
Developmental Ruptures The psychoanalysis of breakdown and defensive solutions
This book questions the diagnostic categories applied to adolescents from a developmental viewpoint, putting forth an alternative perspective for assessment that considers prognostic and risk indicators.
Going beyond the classification of adult psychopathology, Anna Maria Nicolò presents a multidimensional approach to the adolescent mind that explores its complexities through a clinical lens and accompanying theoretical prism. Often, crises in adolescence might well mark the onset of a psychotic process that does not respect phase-specific tasks. Yet in other cases, such developmental ruptures are the opportunity for a positive reorganisation of personality. In this way, adolescence may highlight latent childhood functioning or allow for new integrations. Therefore, accurate diagnosis and early intervention are necessary to enable the developmental reorganisation of both the patient and the family. Drawing on clinical case material, this book provides readers with the practical and theoretical tools to intervene in developmental ruptures.
Developmental Ruptures will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and developmental psychologists, as well as to people working with psychotic onset and crises emerging particularly at the outset of puberty or young adulthood.
Preface to the English edition
Introduction
PART 1 The adolescent and developmental ruptures
1 The adolescent mind
2 The problem of assessment in adolescence
3 Breakdown and developmental ruptures
4 The negated, repudiated, persecutory body
5 Sensoriality and developmental ruptures
6 Fear of breakdown and beyond
7 Developmental ruptures: A transformative pathway
8 Pathological transpersonal links and adolescent breakdown
PART 2 The defence against developmental breakdown
9 Perverse solutions and perversion
10 Daydreams and their evolutions
11 Martina: Alienation in the other
12 Violence as a defence against breakdown
13 Delusion, secrets and reciprocity
14 The transgender enigma
15 Self-harm and cutting
Biography
Anna Maria Nicolò, MD, child neuropsychiatrist, Training Analyst and Full Member of the Società Psicoanalitica Italiana (SPI) and International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), expert in child and adolescent psychoanalysis. Past President of the SPI. President of the International Association of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis (IACFP). She is a member of the Forum for Adolescence of the European Psychoanalytical Federation (FEP) Committee, of which she was Chair. Director of the Journal Interazioni.
“In this fascinating volume, Anna Nicolò masterfully combines her long and in-depth international experience with the innovative creativity of Italian psychoanalysis, of which she is today one of the most authoritative and appreciated exponents. The result is a free and wide-ranging - though rigorous - capacity for theoretical articulation, with special effectiveness in the in-depth clinical reading of adolescent situations and their kaleidoscopic evolutionary complexity”.
Stefano Bolognini, IPA past president
"In her excellent book Developmental Ruptures, Anna Maria Nicolò gives a vivid and subtle representation of adolescent psychic turmoil. She goes beyond the classification of adult psychopathology, to detect the evolutive power most often hidden in adolescent ruptures and collapses. Due to her exceptional clinical and theoretical competences, she opens broadly the field of observation and of listening of adolescent patients, and she proves that 'adolescence is not only a temporal phase, but also an enzyme that permeates the mind and forces to confront oneself with the life cycle' – as she writes. Every practitioner in the field of psychic disease will benefit from reading this outstanding book."
Florence Guignard, Founder of the Société Européenne pour la Psychanalyse de l’Enfant et de l’Adolescent (Sepea), Honorary full member of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society (SPP)
"This book is an important contribution to the psychoanalysis of young people. The author shares her vast clinical experience and also her approach to theory from a pluralistic and open approach. We have long been used to thinking in terms of processes and continuities. The concept of ruptures is very timely in the context of the times we have been living in, where uncertainty and disruption predominate. Children and adolescents are the most vulnerable and prone to break-ups in this context. This book is essential reading for those who work with these patients."
Virginia Ungar, M.D., Buenos Aires Psychoanalytic Association; IPA Past President
