Understanding Infants Psychoanalytically

Focussing on infants and the relationship between child and parent, this book presents a discourse on eminent Jungian child analyst Michael Fordham's model of development that extended Jung's theory to infancy and childhood. In this book, Elizabeth Urban, a Jungian psychotherapist in weekly conversations with Fordham, proposes five key areas, such as identifying periods of primary self-funcionin and the active participation of the infant in development, that contribute to the Fordham model of infant development. Drawing extensively on her observations and experiences working in a London child and adolescent unit, and a mother and baby unit, as well as using real-life observations to support the proposed contributions, the author provides a deeper understanding of infant development in the context of the relationship with the parents. This book is a unique contribution to the study of child development and is of great interest to paediatricians, psychotherapists, and other mental health professionals who work with children and their parents.

Elizabeth Urban trained in child and adult analysis at the Society of Analytic Psychology. During her training, she was supervised by Michael Fordham, Jungian analyst, and continued to work with him until his death in 1995. Her work with Fordham deepened her interest in infancy, which resulted in her developing and integrating Fordham's theories into her clinical work with mothers with their babies in a psychiatric in-patient unit, her work with deaf children, her psychotherapeutic work in a London CAMHS unit, her private psychotherapy practice and in her teaching internationally.

Introduction; Part I: Theory; 1: The primary self and related concepts in Jung, Klein and Isaacs; 2: Infant observation, experimental infant research and psychodynamic theory regarding lack of self/other differentiation; Part II: Explications; 3: Out of the mouths of babes: an enquiry into the sources of language development; 4: 'With healing in her wings ...': integration and repair in a self-destructive adolescent; 5: Developmental aspects of trauma and traumatic aspects of development; Part III: Extensions; 6: Fordham, Jung and the self: a re-examination of Fordham's contribution to Jung 's conceptualisation; 7: The 'self' in analytical psychology: the function of the 'central archetype' within Fordham's model; 8: Reflections on research and learning from the patient: the art and science of what we do; Appendix Elizabeth Urban - list of publications