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The book consists of three parts—theoretical background, clinical work with children, and clinical and educational interventions in work with children. It was issued as part of the monograph series of The Psychoanalytic Unit of University College London and the Anna Freud Center. The editors of the monograph series are Joseph Sandler and Peter Fonagy. The foreword is written by Anne-Marie Sandler.
The first chapter, co-authored by Fonagy and Mary Target, discusses the updated experience of the parent-infant relationship, illustrated by case histories. The second chapter is contributed by Anna Hurry, who emphasizes developmental and classical elements in the therapeutic process, interspersed with an examination of newly acquired data on infant—mother observational research. Hurry suggests that changes occur in therapy as the child internalizes the new experience of the relationship between the child and the therapist.
The book is useful for readers who wish to expand their psychoanalytic vocabulary. It refers to the therapist as a “developmental object,” for being able to relate to the child on this particular developmental level that the child presents—an interesting reworking of the concepts presented in Ferenczi's “Child Analysis in the Analysis of the Adult.” The volume likewise dwells on interactional aspects of clinical work, which can be construed as a helpful rethinking of Clara Thompson's therapeutic approach to interpersonal relationships. An examination of the work of Daniel Stern and Beatrice Beebe on attunement and the failure of attunement in mother—child relationships is also included, as well as the work of John Bowlby on attachment and loss, and Winnicott's good/good-enough mother theory.
Fonagy focuses on the importance of “mentation”—that is, thinking process—in child developmental therapy. His concept of mentation encapsulates observation, causal thinking, and memory rather than archaic telelogical thinking. Mentation is, in sum, the process of makin