You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Although Ferro writes about problems of technique in child analysis and all the clinical material in the book comes from analysis of children or adolescents, he clearly doesn't consider child analysis to have a ‘particular specificity’, or as different in any substantive way from adult analysis, despite the use of different clinical settings and expressive modes: the mind of the analyst functions in the same way with both adults and children, and Ferro is particularly interested in the way in which the analyst's mind functions. Even if his ideas are solidly rooted in his rich clinical and impressive experience as a child analyst, his book aims to make a more general contribution both to psychoanalytical theory and technique, and to the understanding of the general nature and function of the relationship between analyst and patient in any kind of psychoanalytical encounter. This makes it a book aimed at all practitioners of psychoanalysis and not just to those of us working as child analysts.
Ferro begins by outlining his theoretical model. His point of departure is Money-Kyrle's description of the three fundamental models of