Transforming Despair to Hope

Transforming Despair to Hope: Reflections on the Psychotherapeutic Process with Severely Neglected and Traumatised Children offers a thorough overview of the problems and rewards of trying to help severely neglected and traumatised children. Drawing on over 40 cyears of clinical experience, Monica Lanyado provides a historical and social perspective on this challenging population, as well as helpful theoretical frameworks and thoughtful support for all professionals and clinicians working with these children. This book brings together selected past writings and new chapters from Lanyando. In it she describes the consequences of severe neglect and trauma on a child's emotional development, and then goes on to examine what it is that brings about positive change. By using vivid clinical examples of therapeutic practice with these children, she elucidates the difficulties associated with this population, as well as for those who care for them in families and in residential settings. Transforming Despair to Hope is a valuable resource for child and adolescent mental health professionals and trainee clinicians, as well as those in related fields working with children in need.

Monica Lanyado is a child and adolescent psychotherapist who has worked with severely neglected and traumatised children for 40 years. She is a training supervisor at the British Psychotherapy Foundation. Her publications include The Presence of the Therapist: Treating Childhood Trauma (2004) and, co-edited with Ann Horne, The Handbook of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy: Psychoanalytic Approaches (1999, 2009) and the Independent Psychoanalytic Approaches with Children and Adolescents series.

Foreword - Peter Wilson Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1 The far reaching consequences of neglect and trauma in childhood. Chapter 2 The historical and social context: influences on the treatment of severely neglected and traumatised children today. Chapter 3. The absence of 'holding' and containment, and the absence of parental protection. Chapter 4. Complex traumatic childhood losses: mourning and acceptance, endings and beginnings. Chapter 5. Playing out not acting out: the development of the capacity to play in the therapy of children who are 'in transition' from fostering to adoption. (2008) Chapter 6. 'The playful presence of the therapist: 'antidoting' defences in the therapy of a late-adopted adolescent patient (2006) Chapter 7. Transition and change: an exploration of the resonances between transitional and meditative states of mind and their role in the therapeutic process. (2012) Chapter 8. The impact of listening on the listener: consultation to the helping professions who work with sexually abused young people. (2009) Chapter 9. 'Transforming despair to hope in the treatment of extreme trauma: a view from the supervisor's chair' (2016) Appendix: publications References Index