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Those who follow Jeanne Magagna's activities know her as an indefatigable editor, a fairy godmother of psychoanalytical ideas, concerned to safeguard them, spread them and to find applications in different settings. This book, which is in keeping with her paramount preoccupation, is in part the English translation of Tempo Lineare by Patrizia Pasquini, published in 2007. Pasquini, a nursery teacher and child psychotherapist who trained in Rome, and Carla Busato Barbaglio, a psychoanalyst, created and directed the psychodynamically informed nursery service Tempo Lineare that is the subject of her book. Magagna edited the English edition and wrote an additional five chapters for it.
The book has six parts. The first section describes the nursery and how it fosters learning, curiosity and creativity in children, using the model of infant and young child observation developed at the Tavistock Clinic after Esther Bick. Then there is a series of chapters on observational studies of the development of the young mind. In the third section, Pasquini and Magagna explore how to understand children's play, in general, and with reference to work in the nursery. The fourth section shows how fairy tales can be used to deepen children's emotional understanding. Finally, sections five and six are concerned with the collaboration between nursery, school, family and society. The nursery personnel see themselves not as experts in child development but rather as part of a team: parents and society, in its wide sense, are all involved in the task of helping children to grow. The role of the parents is particularly stressed, and they actively contribute in team discussions with the teachers and the psychoanalyst; they also learn to observe their children by doing—what we would call—a version of ‘infant and young child observation’.
Tempo Lineare is a government-funded pilot project for children from 0-6 and their families. Established in 1999 in the centre of Rome, it offers a place where c