When a Child Has Been Abused: Towards Psychoanalytic Understanding and Therapy

155 Pages·2018·1.373 MB·English

by  Frances Thomson-Salo, Laura Tognoli

When a Child Has Been Abused
This important and wide-ranging book explores the world of a child or young
person who has been abused or neglected. It seeks to understand their world, to
easethepainfromwhichtheysuffer,andtohealthewoundsthattheabusehasleft.
Examining how abuse always takes place in the context of relationships, and
involves a misuse of power that causes a traumatic overwhelming of the child
or adolescent, abuse also evokes strong countertransference. This affects interven-
tions, particularly when clinicians struggle with feelings of which they may feel
ashamed. A difficulty in coming to terms with and addressing child abuse
relates to unconscious factors which, by freezing the emotional area surrounding
the abuse (or by blinding the area of personality), makes some thoughts
unthinkable.
Considering traditional and novel ways of helping children who feel they
have been maltreated, the book offers suggestions for individual treatment as
well as describing the successful work carried out with child refugees. It also
offers a glimpse into what child psychoanalysts interpret and do with children
who feel a parent hates them.
Frances Thomson-Salo is Associate Professor and Consultant Infant Mental
HealthClinicianintheCentreforWomen’sMentalHealthattheRoyalWomen’s
Hospital, Melbourne, Australia, Honorary Principal Fellow in the University of
Melbourne’s Department of Psychiatry, and Instructor in the University of Mel-
bourneGraduateDiploma/MastersinInfantandParentMentalHealth,Australia.
Laura Tognoli Pasquali is a member of the International Psychoanalytical
Association’s Committee on Women and Psychoanalysis and former training
and supervising analyst in the Italian Psychoanalytical Society.
Psychoanalysis and Women Series
Series Editor: Frances Thomson-Salo
Homosexualities: Psychogenesis, Polymorphism, and
Countertransference
Edited by Elda Abrevaya, Frances Thomson-Salo
Myths of Mighty Women:
Their Application in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Edited by Arlene Kramer Richards, Lucille Spira
Medea:
Myth and Unconscious Fantasy
Edited by Esa Roos
The Status of Women:
Violence, Identity, and Activism
Edited by Vivian B. Pender
Changing Sexualities and Parental Functions in the Twenty-First
Century:
Changing Sexualities, Changing Parental Functions
Candida Se Holovko, Frances Thomson-Salo
The Courage to Fight Violence Against Women:
Psychoanalytic and Multidisciplinary Perspectives
Edited by Paula L. Ellman, Nancy R. Goodman
When a Child is Abused:
Towards Psychoanalytic Understanding and Therapy
Edited by Frances Thomson-Salo, Laura Tognoli Pasquali
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Psychoanalysis-and-Women-Series/book-series/KARNACPWS
When a Child Has Been
Abused
Towards Psychoanalytic Understanding and
Therapy
Edited by
Frances Thomson-Salo and Laura
Tognoli Pasquali
Firstpublished2019
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Contents
About the editors and contributors vii
Acknowledgements xii
Series editor foreword xiii
Introduction 1
FRANCESTHOMSON-SALO
PART I
Mainly clinical 7
1 A comprehensive approach to child abuse 9
JORDISALA
2 Discussion of Jordi Sala’s paper 18
IRMABRENMANPICK
3 Child abuse as confusion of tongues 22
LUISJORGEMARTINCABRÉ
4 Todd: The analysis of a latency-aged boy who self-harmed 28
MALIA.MANN
5 The abused child – a sad, never-ending story: Some observations
on abused children in the current refugee crisis 40
MARIANNELEUZINGER-BOHLEBER
6 The making of an abuser 50
JOHNWOODS
7 The lost child 59
LAURATOGNOLIPASQUALI
vi Contents
8 When something that should happen does not: The unwelcome
child and his psychic vicissitudes 69
MASSIMOVIGNATAGLIANTI
9 May your steel be as sharp as your final no! 78
GEMMAZONTINI
PART II
Protecting the care systems to prevent burnout 89
10 All in the same boat: The activity of the Abuse and Ill-Treatment
Group 91
MARIAPIACONTEANDSTEFANOBOMARSI
11 Abused children: Reflections on the model 99
RENATARIZZITELLIANDCAROLADELFAVERO
12 ‘I am naked, not just barehanded!’ 104
MARIANACCARICARLIZZI
13 Abused children, caregivers, psychoanalysts – voices from the
groups: Reflections on the model and its use 108
ANNAMARIARISSO
14 What happens to pain: The evolution of the request 119
ELISAALICEPELLERANOANDIVANAPOZZOLI
15 The group is frightened and frightening 124
CHIARANAPOLIANDANNAMARIARISSO
PART III
Legal aspects: Task and role of the judiciary in child abuse 129
16 Protecting the child and assessing the evidence: Task and role of
the judiciary in child abuse 131
CRISTINAMAGGIA
Index 137
About the editors and contributors
Editors
Frances Thomson-Salo, Associate Professor, trained in the United Kingdom
as an adult and child psychoanalyst and is a member of the British Psycho-
analytical Society and of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society of which
she is a past president. She is a training analyst and was overall chair of the
Committee on Women and Psychoanalysis for the International Psycho-
analytical Association from 2009–15. She is Series Editor for Karnac’s Psy-
choanalysis and Women series and a member of the editorial board of the
International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
Laura Tognoli Pasquali moved soon after her degree in medicine in Italy,
her country of origin, to England where she worked as a psychiatrist in
different hospitals and therapeutic communities. As her work was mainly in
groups she became very interested in group dynamics, an interest she culti-
vated throughout her psychoanalytic career. She trained as a psychoanalyst
in the British Psychoanalytical Society with the Kleinian group and in 1976
qualified as an analyst. Back in Italy, she worked mainly in private practice
becoming a training and supervising analyst in the Italian Psychoanalytical
Society. She has written several papers, some published, partly used for lec-
tures in Italy, Germany and the United States. She now lives in a small
fishing village where she loves growing flowers and plants. Taking care of
plants has widened her love for teaching and her attention to clinical work;
findingthebestmilieu forfragileyoungshoots helpsthinking,reflectingand
dreaming about the basic needs and desires of human beings. She enjoys her
clinical work and in her analytic practice she has treated many women and
thought deeply about the experiences they went through in their life.
Therefore, with immense pleasure, she accepted to become a member of
the Committee on Women and Psychoanalysis.
Contributors
Stefano Bomarsi is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and a member of the
Italian Psychoanalytical Society.
viii About the editors and contributors
Irma Brenman Pick came to London from South Africa in 1955 and trained
first at the Tavistock Clinic as a child psychotherapist, then at the British
Institute of Psychoanalysis as an adult and child analyst. She is now a dis-
tinguished fellow and training analyst in the British Society and a past pre-
sident of the society. Her published papers include ‘On adolescence’,
‘Working through in the countertransference’ and ‘Concern: spurious and
real’ – all in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. Together with her late
husband, Eric Brenman, she has taught extensively abroad.
LuisJorge MartinCabréisafull memberandtraining andsupervisinganalyst
of the Psychoanalytic Association of Madrid (APM) and a training and
supervisinganalystin childandadolescentpsychoanalysis. Heisamemberof
the Spanish Society of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy for Children and
Adolescents, a member of the Institute for the Study of Psychosomatic
Medicine and a corresponding member of the Association Internationale
d’Histoire de la Psychanalyse. He is a founding member of the International
Sándor Ferenczi Foundation. He is a member of the European editorial
board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. He was a member of the
executive board of APM in 1991–95 anda member of theeditorial board of
the Revista de Psicoanálisis de la APM in 1994–98.
Maria Pia Conte, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is a full member of the Ita-
lian Psychoanalytical Society and guest member of the British Psycho-
analytical Society. She is a member of OPUS and Il Nodo Group.
Carola Del Favero is a psychologist and psychotherapist and a candidate of
the Italian Psychoanalytical Society. She is a member of the group, Psico-
terapia e Scienze Umane. She leads clinical training groups at the Centro
Psicoanalitico di Genova and at the Ruolo Terapeutico Psychotherapy
Training School in Genoa. She works in private practice with adults and
children, and with kindergartens as a trainer, consultant and supervisor.
Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber is a full professor for psychoanalysis at the
University of Kassel and head director of the Sigmund-Freud-Institut,
Frankfurt, training analyst of the German Psychoanalytical Association and
member of the Swiss Psychoanalytical Association. Her main research fields
include clinical and extra clinical research in psychoanalysis, developmental
research and the interdisciplinary dialogue between psychoanalysis and
embodied cognitive science, educationalsciences andGermanliterature. She
was awarded the Sigourney Award in 2016.
Cristina Maggia gained a law degree at Milan University in 1978. She
started working as a lawyer in a famous law firm and then in 1981 she
became a judge, working at the Milan Criminal Court dealing with
investigations into organised crime cases until 1993, when she moved to
Genoa. Here she became a judge at the Genoa Juvenile Court. Since 2012
she has been Chief of the Genoa Juvenile Prosecutor Office. In November
About the editors and contributors ix
2014, she was elected vice president of the Italian Association of Juvenile
and Family Court Judges.
Mali A. Mann is Faculty, Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst and a child
supervisor at San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. She is the North
American co-chair of the Committee on Child and Adolescent Psycho-
analysis/International Psychoanalytic Association and the chair of the Inter-
Committee on Child Abuse and Prevention/International Psychoanalytic
Association. She is Clinical Professor, Adjunct, Department of Psychiatry
and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University Medical Center as well as the
vice chair of the Adjunct Clinical Council and a faculty lecturer at the
Department of Psychiatry, Child Psychiatry Division of Stanford University.
She gives psychoanalytic courses and talks in the Bay Area. Mann has
authored several psychoanalytic papers, book reviews, book chapters and
poetry. Her book on Psychoanalytic Aspects of Assisted Reproductive Technology
was published by Karnac. The book received the Pinnacle Book Achieve-
ment Award and the International Book Award and was a finalist in the
2016 Bookvana Awards. Her creative writing is primarily poetry and non-
fiction. She has been a member of Pegasus Physician Writers since 2013.
She is currently working on a collection of her poems and finds the inter-
connection between poetry and painting inspiring. Her artistic creative
introspection is expressed through her painting. A member of the Flying
Doctors for the last 20 years, she volunteers to help staff at orphanages in
Mexico and treat patients in the clinics.
Maria Naccari Carlizzi, child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, full member
and expert in children and adolescents of the Italian Society of Psycho-
analysis and International Psychoanalytical Association, is Adjunct Pro-
fessor of Infant and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry at Genoa University.
She consults to the civil and criminal courts of Genoa in family matters,
abuse and ill treatment. She works in private practice with children,
adolescents, adults and couples and leads work discussion groups with
healthcare professionals. She is interested in combining clinical work
with research, being deeply involved with the emotional development of
the child, the adolescent and the couple.
Chiara Napoli is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst working in Naples.
Elisa Alice Pellerano was born in Genoa in 1974, graduated in psychology
and specialised in clinical psychology. From 2002, she worked as a psy-
chologist and psychotherapist in private practice in Genoa. She also worked
on a project to help prisoners in Genoa offering them group work as an
instrument of support. She later worked as a psychotherapist in a mental
health and addiction centre. She also worked in hospital training to prevent
burn out, in both children and adult hospital care givers, using the group
setting. In 2017, she became a member of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society
and the International Psychoanalytical Association.