1st Edition

Untying the Knot Working with Children and Parents

By A.H. Brafman Copyright 2001
    176 Pages
    by Routledge

    176 Pages
    by Routledge

    Untying The Knot sets out to present a clinical approach to cases where the referred patient is a child or adolescent, but in which the parents are intimately involved in the therapeutic situation.Three fundamental principles inform the work: firstly, that early experience influences present lives; secondly, that unconscious feelings and fantasies are elements which shape everyday conscious experience; and thirdly, that the interaction of children and parents leads to patterns which become self-perpetuating and make it virtually impossible to define what is cause and what is effect in their relationship.The author acknowledges the pioneering work of Donald Winnicott in the treatment of children, emphasizing particularly his refusal to be bound by rigid notions of treatment modalities, but instead to go to the heart of the matter - an understanding of the child's own confusion and pain, and then, through its elucidation and expression, to bring relief.

    CHAPTER ONE Introduction CHAPTER TWO The clinical encounter CHAPTER THREE Child and parent interacting CHAPTER FOUR Mainly the child CHAPTER FIVE Virtually only the child CHAPTER SIX Summing up.

    Biography

    A. H. Brafman trained as a psychoanalyst of adults and children. In his NHS career he worked as a Consultant in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and for many years ran a group for parents and under-fives. He ran Infant Observation courses at the Institute of Psychoanalysis and also seminars on psychodynamic work with children, adolescents and adults for the British Society of Psychoanalysis and several other training organizations. He was also Honorary Lecturer at University Hospital Medical School, where he taught students and psychotherapy trainees. He has published a number of books, including 'Untying the Knot', 'Fostering Independence: Helping and Caring in Psychodynamic Therapies', and 'The Language of Drawings: A New Finding in Psychodynamic Work'.