Editorial

This general issue of the journal contains some fascinating papers. We start with an article using a case study to look at how an infant might experience a post-natally depressed mother. The next three papers describe the therapists’ attempts at drawing out their patients: one from three years of silence, one from debilitating autism and the third from the trauma of a family tragedy. The final paper describes a study in psychic change processes in suicidal adolescents.

Salomonsson’s very detailed paper goes a little way to countering the paucity of published case studies of postpartum depression (PND) and its effects on an infant’s experience of its mother. The awareness of the importance of good infant mental health is growing but more evidence to support the argument for providing early therapeutic interventions is needed. It would be good to see more of such case studies especially given the prevalence of PND. A case study is provided of a little girl initially in treatment alongside her mother and then on her own in therapy with the same psychotherapist. Taking account of the child’s symptoms of restlessness, her longing for the breast, sleep difficulties and a fear of holes and ghosts, the author posits a psychoanalytic model of how a baby might experience a depressed mother. He suggests that babies of depressed mothers may not react to the depression itself but to the resulting disrupted containment, arousing overwhelming fears and the need for powerful emotional defences. It is a fascinating description of parent–infant work and how the therapist came to decide on moving the child into individual work. There is a great range of useful theoretical references.

Anagnostaki’s paper describes three years of silence in the intensive treatment of a pre-adolescent girl who had been diagnosed with ‘major depression’. The author examines the meaning of silence in the therapeutic context, something many of us have struggled with at times. Anagnostaki considers how the the