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Jeanne Magagna, Karnac Books, 2012, 366 pp. (paperback and eBook)
Over the past three decades, there has been increasing awareness of children and young people who have given up on struggling with life and have stopped speaking, eating and walking. This pervasive ‘retreat from life’ is based on extreme anxiety about growing up and the changes involved, which are inevitably painful at times. Change itself is dreaded and these children attempt to control and stop change though their apparent resistance to living.
Jeanne Magagna, from her position of Head of Psychotherapy Services at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London and later working at the Ellern Mede Centre for children with eating disorders, has seen and treated 15 of these children and young people and is a pioneer in this field. It requires great determination, faith and courage to treat these extremely difficult and disturbed children, and reliance on the multidisciplinary team is mandatory. This new book of Magagna's is the first really comprehensive account of psychodynamic treatment to emerge. It is a multidisciplinary endeavour with multiple authors, many of whom are members of the team. Thus, the authors of chapters include a teacher, a physiotherapist, an art therapist, a psychology student and a family therapist, each describing their personal intensive work with a child. There is also a heart-rending chapter written by the bewildered mother of one of these pervasively refusing children.
The book is written not only for professionals but also for the parents of these children for whom the condition, and the treatment, may be a source of great pain, but whose assistance is absolutely essential in the treatment.
Knowing the importance of detailed observation from doing infant observation with Esther Bick, Magagna encouraged the nurses at Great Ormond Street Hospital to observe these children closely and to note the minute by minute personal experience of being with them, and in this way t