Abstract
This paper centers on the exploration and utilization of a contemporary, psychoanalytically-based parent education perspective aimed at interrupting intergenerational trauma. It highlights The Parenting Process, an integrative model of parent education that is at once educational and therapeutic. This model is explored in light of a third listening stance based on James Fosshage’s listening perspectives concept. This paper underscores and illustrates through clinical material the benefits of playing with implicit and explicit communication across various sensory modalities.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ainsworth, M., Blehar, M., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. NJ: Erlbaum and Associates.
Bacal, H. A. (1985). Optimal responsiveness and the therapeutic process. Progress in Self Psychology, 1, 202–227.
Bacal, H. A. (2010). The power of specificity in psychotherapy: When therapy works an when it doesn’t. MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
Beebe, B., & Lachmann, F. (1988). The contribution of mother-infant mutual influence to the origins of self- and object representations. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 5, 305–337.
Beebe, B., Lachmann, F. M., & Jaffe, J. (1997). A transformational model of presymbolic representations. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 7, 215–224.
Benedek, T. (1938). Adaptation to reality in early infancy. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 7, 200–215.
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss (Vol. 1). New York: Basic Books.
Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Clinical applications of attachment theory. London: Routledge.
Bradfield, B. (2011). The dissociation of lived experience: A relational psychoanalytic analysis of the intergenerational transmission of trauma. International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, 6, 531–550.
Campbell, B. K., Silver, D., Novick, K. K., Novick, J., Mittlestaedt, M., & Walton, A. (1995). The application of Lichtenberg’s five motivational systems to the analysis of mother-infant interaction. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 15, 481–492.
Connors, M. E. (2010). Symptom-focused dynamic psychotherapy. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 20(1), 46–50.
Davies, J. M. (2004). Whose bad objects are we anyway?: Repetition and our elusive love affair with evil. Psychoanalysis Dialogue, 14, 711–732.
Falkenström, F. (2003). A Buddhist contribution to the psychoanalytic psychology of self. International Journal Psycho-Analysis, 84, 1551–1568.
Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E., & Target, M. (2002). Affect regulation, mentalization, and the development of the self. New York: Other Books.
Fosshage, J. L. (1997). Listening/experiencing perspectives and the quest for facilitating responsiveness. In A. Goldberg (Ed.), Progress in self psychology, Chap. 4, Vol. 13 (pp. 33–55).
Fosshage, J. L. (2003). Contextualizing self psychology and relational psychoanalysis: Bi-directional influence and proposed syntheses. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 39, 411–448.
Frie, R., & Coburn, W. J. (2011). Persons in context: The challenge of individuality in theory and practice. New York: Routledge.
Gadamer, H. (1989). Truth and method (2nd ed.). London: Sheed and Ward.
Greenberg, J., & Mitchell, S. (1983). Object relations in psychoanalytic theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Greenspan, S. I. (2007). Infant-caregiver interactions and the developmental, individual-difference, relationship-based (DIR) model: Implications for psychopathology and the psychotherapeutic process. Journal of Infant Child Adolescent Psychotherapy, 6, 211–244.
Grienenberger, J. F. (2006). Group process as a holding environment facilitating the development of the parental reflective function: Commentary on the article by Arietta Slade. Psychoanalysis Inquiry, 26, 668–675.
Kohlberg, L. (1981). Essays on moral development, Vol. I: The philosophy of moral development. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Kohut, H. (1984). How does analysis cure?. Chicago: University Chicago Press.
Lichtenberg, J., Lachmann, F., & Fossage, J. (1992). Self and motivational systems: Toward a theory of technique. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Lillas, L., & Turnbull, J. (2009). Infant/child mental health, early intervention, and relationship-based therapies. New York: Norton.
Mahler, M., Pine, F., & Bergman, A. (1975). The psychological birth of the human infant: Symbiosis and individuation. New York: Basic Books.
Main, M., & Solomon, J. (1990). Procedures for identifying infants as disorganized/disoriented during the Ainsworth strange situation. In M. T. Greenberg, D. Cicchetti, & E. M. Cummings (Eds.), Attachment during the preschool years: Theory, research and intervention (pp. 121–160). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Miller, A. (1997). Drama of the gifted child. New York: Basic Books.
Mitchell, S. (2000). Relationality: From attachment to intersubjectivity. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.
Neill, A. S. (1960). Summerhill: A radical guide to childhood. New York: Hart Publishing Company.
Paris, E. (2008). The parenting process: A psychoanalytically informed model of parent education, DVD. Los Angeles: Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis.
Paris, E., & Paris, T. (1994). “I’ll Never Do To My Kids What My Parents Did to Me!” A guide to conscious parenting. New York: Warner Books.
Piaget, J. (1930). The child’s conception of physical causality. London: Routledge.
Schmidt, E. (2004). Therese Benedek: Shaping psychoanalysis from within. Annual Psychoanalysis, 32, 217–231.
Schore, A. (1994). Affect regulation and the origin of the self: The neurobiology of emotional development. NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Sheehan-Dare, H. (1938). Applied: Parent education and psychoanalysis. A symposium. (Reprint from Parent Education, III(4), 3–26). International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 19, 233–234.
Siegel, D. (2011). Mindsight: The new science of personal transformation. New York: Bantam Books.
Slade, A., Sadler, L., Dios-Kenn, C. D., Webb, D., Currier-Ezepchick, J., & Mayes, L. (2005). Minding the baby: A reflective parenting program. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 60, 74–100.
Socarides, D. D., & Stolorow, R. D. (1984). Affects and selfobjects. Annual of Psychoanalysis, 12, 105–119.
Stolorow, R. D. (2007). Trauma and human existence. New York: Taylor & Francis.
Stolorow, R. D. (2008). Imagine a world. International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, 3(1), 126–128.
Stolorow, R. D., & Atwood, G. E. (1996). The intersubjective perspective. Psychoanalytic Review, 83, 181–194.
Thelen, E., & Smith, L. B. (1994). A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. Colorado: A Bradford Book.
Van der Kolk, B. (1996). Traumatic stress: The effects of overwhelming experience on mind, body, and society. New York: The Guilford Press.
Wallin, D. (2007). Attachment in psychotherapy. New York: Guilford Publications.
Winnicott, D. W. (1938). Review of Child Psychiatry: by Leo Kanner (Baillière, Tindall and Cox, London, 1937, pp. xviii + 528). International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 19, 362–363.
Winnicott, D. W. (1942). Review of The nursing couple: by Merell P. Middlemore (Hamish Hamilton, Medical Books, London, 1941, pp. 195). International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 23, 179–181.
Winnicott, D. W. (1942b). Child department consultations. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 23, 139–146.
Winnicott, D. W. (1964). The child, the family and the outside world. Cambridge: Perseus Book Group.
Winnicott, D. W. (1965). The maturational processes and the facilitating environment. Madison, CT: International University Press.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank my writing group, Margaret Allan, Sue Fox Horn, Mary Nakata, and Joan Rankin, for their help and encouragement in the development of this paper. I also wish to acknowledge Margy Sperry and Sandra Hershberg for their suggestions, and with deep gratitude--a special thanks to William Coburn for his belief in the importance of these ideas and his invaluable editorial assistance.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Paris, E. Interrupting Trauma and Advancing Development: Considering Parent Education in Contemporary Psychoanalytic Treatment. Clin Soc Work J 41, 84–92 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-012-0412-3
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-012-0412-3