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The Editors are pleased to announce that the Michael Fordham prize for the best paper relating to clinical issues published in 2000 in the Journal has been awarded posthumously to:
Mara Sidoli
(d. October 2000)
for her paper:
‘The little puppet: working with autistic defences in mother-infant psychotherapy’
The paper appeared in the April 2000 issue of the Journal, and the ‘Abstract’ reads as follows:
This paper outlines a constellation around birth in our society that is related to advanced western medicine and the way that families move around the globe. It describes a brief therapy with a three-year-old child who was diagnosed as autistic, and a mother who resorted to ‘heroic’ defences against the anxiety of being unsupported in a strange country. The therapist undertook to process the catastrophic experiences of the birth as expressed in the child's play, and transform the accompanying monstrous fantasies into human experiences and thoughts. By providing a maternal container for both mother and child, the therapist was able to dissolve the couple's negative enmeshment and help create a space in the mother's mind in which she could process her own feelings, and thereby process and understand the child's feelings and communications.
Submissions are now invited for the 2001 prize, which should reach the Editors by 30 April 2001. For further details, please contact the Administrative Editor, JAP, 1 Daleham Gardens, London NW3 5BY. Email: