A Review of “The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals”

The program described in the present article focused on service member parents and their teenage children participating in camps together. The scope of the project was to provide an opportunity for military personnel who recently returned from deployment to reconnect with an adolescent after an extended absence due to deployment. The camps used the Campfire Curriculum, which included experiential learning, team-building experiences and nightly campfire programs from the Blue to You curriculum for military families. Open-ended responses from parent participants suggested that time together with their children, interacting with fellow service members and their kids, sharing stories, and opportunities for camaraderie were especially important and meaningful.     

Maternal Executive Functions,Maternal Discipline,and Children’s School Readiness: A Process Oriented Approach

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Emerging conceptual frameworks identify executive functions as a potential explanatory variable in determinants of parenting, and a growing body of research...     

“Dying for a Baby” and Other “Confusions of Tongues”: A Discussion of “Childless”

This paper discusses the beautiful case presented by Rebeccca Harrington in “Childless.” This discussion focuses on Harrington’s narrated ambivalences around reproduction and the traumatic repetitions experienced by her patient Shira. As her case unfolds, Harrington recognizes the ways her silences around Shira’s engagement with assisted reproductive technologies reenacted a form of a parental blindness to abuse. Building on Harrington’s ideas, this discussion integrates queer and psychoanalytic theory to ponder some ways the fetus has become a fetish for U.S. culture and how this shift appears to be a form of temporally based affect regulation that collapses spaces of ambivalence around maternity for women. Within these cultural dynamics, this discussion emphasizes Harrington’s call for psychoanalysis as a field to analyze its own pronatalist agenda.     

Maternal Power Assertive Discipline and Children’s Adjustment in High-Risk Families: A Social Domain Theory Approach

Journal of Child and Family Studies - The goal of the present study was to examine associations between maternal use of power assertive parenting across different discipline contexts and...     

Iteration and Homologies of Difference: A Discussion of Veronica Csillag’s “Emmy Grant: Immigration as Repetition of Trauma and as Potential Space”

This discussion of Veronica Csillag’s paper “Emmy Grant: Immigration as Repetition of Trauma and as Potential Space” (this issue) emphasizes the importance of place (rather than the more common psychoanalytic category of space) and the iteration of psychic dynamisms. Playing on the difference between being a subject of one’s own history and being a subject of History, this paper highlights the importance of recognizing the homology of our differences in order to become freer agents, more able to recognize what we have inherited and what we can make of it through creativity.     

On Love and Fortitude: A Relational Discussion of “Poison Cookies”

The author offers a relational perspective on Oram's “Poison Cookies.” The discussion focuses on two central questions. Why does analytic empathy feel like torment to this patient? How does the analysis transmute this experience into healing? In the course of this investigation, the author will also consider the role of envy, the role of the sibling, the analyst's predicament around termination, and our tendency to conflate isolation and solitude.     

Preventing Children��s Aggression in Immigrant Latino Families: A Mixed Methods Evaluation of the Families and Schools Together Program

The effectiveness of the evidence based program, Families and Schools Together (FAST), was examined in two inter-related studies with immigrant Latino (Mexican) families in the U.S. In Study 1, we reported findings from pre-test, 3-month post-test, and 12-month follow-up surveys of parents and children participating in the FAST program. Families were selected from communities that were randomly assigned to either intervention or control groups. A total of 282 parents (263 mothers and 19 fathers) participated in either the intervention (140 parents) or control (142 parents) condition over the course of 3 years. Each of the parents had a participating focal child; thus, 282 children (144 females and 138 males; average age = 9.5 years) participated in the study. A primary focus of the research was to determine whether participation in FAST led to reductions in children's aggression. Using linear growth models, no differences were noted on aggression between intervention and control groups, although intervention children did show significant improvements in social problem-solving skills and perceptions of collective efficacy. In Study 2, we conducted two focus groups with ten FAST participants to explore whether other unmeasured outcomes were noted and to understand better the mechanisms and impact of FAST. All of the parents in the focus groups reported that FAST had helped them better relate to and communicate with their children, and that the greatest effect was on the behavior of their older children. Results are discussed in terms of cultural fit of the FAST program for immigrant Latino families and future directions.     

A Review of “Child Anxiety Disorders: A Family-Based Treatment Manual for Practitioners”

This study investigated the relationship between intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetrated by women and the attachment style of each partner in 20 couples in which the male partner was in therapy for abusive men. Results confirmed the presence of a relationship between IPV and attachment style. Men with an avoidant attachment reported higher physical abuse victimization and higher use of negotiation during conflict, as revealed by their partner. Women with an anxious attachment reported having inflected more injuries and were less likely to use negotiation during conflict, as revealed by their partner. Findings highlight the relational basis of IPV.     

Discussion of “Bread and Roses: Empathy and Recognition”

Rachel Kabasakalian McKay’s (this issue) important contribution focuses on a comparison of “empathy” and “recognition.” In her paper, McKay compares the sensibility of responsive attunement that she associates with empathy to the sensibility of distinctiveness that she connects to recognition. This discussion takes up this comparison of empathy and recognition associated with their embeddedness in self-psychology in contrast to relational and intersubjectivity theories. In the author’s view, the essential tension between autonomy and at-one-ness is necessary to both empathy and recognition and should not be split between them. Because recognition is Benjamin’s fundamental idea, the foundation of intersubjective recognition theory, it is incumbent on us to develop and elaborate the precise technical meanings, denotations, and connotations of this term, along with its clinical and social implications. The author believes that the key to this project is to see that, for Benjamin, recognition occurs throughout life across developmental levels and thus actually refers to quite different, although deeply related, phenomena.     

What Women Want: A Discussion of “Childless”

Rebecca Harrington’s “Childless” breaks the cultural and psychoanalytic silence about the idiosyncratic meanings of maternality—challenging our pronatalist assumptions. Following suit, this discussion questions our understanding of what women want. Freud was famously confounded by that question, and still, the psychological processes leading to decisions about motherhood are largely absent from psychoanalytic theory. Because of this, the heteronormative, socially agreed-upon dictum that women must be, and want to be, mothers remains locked in place. The conflation of feminine, woman, and motherhood serve to negate female subjectivity, limiting the possibilities for other creative pursuits. Contemporary psychoanalysis eschews the primary importance of instinctual drives yet has not challenged the notion of a maternal instinct that drives women to desire motherhood. The cultural and psychoanalytic silence about the complexities of reproduction and child-rearing has rendered individual women silent and their desires toward and away from motherhood unarticulated.     

Flexibility of the Psychoanalytic Approach in the Treatment of a Suicidal Patient: Stubborn Silences as “Playing Dead”

The author presents the clinical case of a patient in his third analysis who seemed emotionless, did not feel alive, and complained of an uncontrollable urge to gamble, with disastrous financial results. His previous four-session-a-week “orthodox” analysis had left him prey to a sense of emptiness and to intense suicidal urges. He wanted only two weekly sessions, which became three after some analytic work. The author stresses the danger of rigidly following inflexible standards and the consequent activation of a pseudo-compliance in the analysand. A more slowly paced psychoanalysis should not be considered lower in the pecking order than “high-frequency” treatment, the author maintains: It requires great creative subjective involvement on the part of the analyst and close interaction in the context of the analytic couple. The author shows how this analysis involved a series of interactions in which the analyst was called upon to exercise a complex responsiveness, attuned in each instance to the patient's current needs. Finally he focuses on some clinical passages to show how the patient's internal theories represent a glaring assault on common sense and how death was not recognized perceptionally on a realistic level, but was instead replaced with acting out death against himself by keeping himself mentally dead and by suicidal urges.     

Discussion of Dominique Scarfone’s Paper, “On ‘That Is Not Psychoanalysis’: Ethics as the Main Tool for Psychoanalytic Knowledge and Discussion”: Terminable and Interminable Discussion

When we ask ourselves if psychoanalysis is a science and what type of science it is, we raise many questions related to the notion of faithfulness. For instance, we might ask what it means to be faithful to a text, to the essence of an author’s writings, or to his or her creative power. If being a psychoanalyst means, at the very least, being able to translate the other’s thoughts, one of the difficulties of this task lies in what we call the complexity of translation. Analysts translate, interpret, interfere with the thoughts of the other in order to open up new paths, to offer themselves as a projection screen, or to try to create a link between two subjects so as to make room for the present, which is sometimes erased by history. To elucidate some of these issues, Scarfone (this issue) focuses on a discussion on the ethics of the analyst and of psychoanalysis     

Discussion of “Emmy Grant: Immigration as Repetition of Trauma and as Potential Space”: Commentary on Paper by Veronica Csillag

This commentary is a response to Veronica Csillag’s exploration of the influence of historical and transgenerational trauma on the lives of immigrants, and on the psychoanalytic process (this issue). Dr. Csillag’s paper deepens our understanding of the intrapsychic life of immigrants who have suffered collective trauma pre-migration and continue to suffer from “ghosts” from the past. Her ideas are critical to examining not only the specific traumas incurred in Europe related to the Nazi Holocaust and totalitarian and socialist regimes but also to contemporary traumas related to social identity and position in the United States. In this commentary, I elaborate three primary areas within Dr. Csillag’s contribution: (a) the illusion of choice in traumatic migration, (b) secrecy and privacy, and (c) experience of the outsider and the insider. My discussion underscores the importance of engaging with historical and ongoing trauma in psychoanalytic psychotherapy as a path to healing within individual and collective dimensions.     

A Review of “Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy With Couples and Families: A Comprehensive Guide for Clinicians” by Frank M. Dattilio

Abstract

Grandparents in family therapy: a clinical research study, by berit ingersoll-dayton&;margaret b. neal, 1991, 40, 264-271.

Polyincestuous families,by Kathleen Coulborn Faller, 1991, 6(3), 310-322

Accessing children's perceptions of their family: Circular questioning revisited,by Mark 1. Benson, Toni Schindler-Zimmerman,&;Doris Martin, 1991,17(4), 363-372

What is transmitted in the intergenerational transmission of violence?by Sharon Moore Alexander&;Elmore R. Alexander 111, 1991, 53, 657-668

Trends in corporate family-supportive policies,by Ellerz Galinsky, Diane Hughes,&;Judy David, 1990, 15, 75-94     

On Psychodynamic Meanings of Psychiatric Treatment: Discussion of “From Dyad to Triad”

Dr. Bar-Haim has covered vast territory in her contribution “From Dyad to Triad: On Psychodynamic Meanings of Psychiatric Treatment,” (this issue) and I welcome the opportunity to offer my thoughts on her contribution and this important topic more generally. The issues touched upon include the various meanings of psychiatric treatment for patient and therapist; factors that impact compliance; resistances to suggesting medication consultation on the part of the therapist; challenges of the prescribing therapist; the role of a “disease” model in mental suffering; the overdetermined meaning of “symptom”; and, most important, recommendations for establishing effective treatment when a treatment triangle exists. I address some of these issues and comment on two clinical vignettes to illustrate my way of thinking.     

Children’s Perspectives and Evaluations of Safety in Diverse Settings and Their Subjective Well-Being: A Multi-National Approach

There is a need to explore variations in children’s safety perceptions for different settings (home, school and neighbourhood) and their relationship with subjective well-being (this including satisfaction with safety and satisfaction with life as whole) by comparing a variety of cultural contexts. A further objective is to explore to what extent gender, age group (10 and 12-year-olds) and level of SWB (measured using the SLSS -Student’s Life Satisfaction Scale- and the BMSLSS -Brief Multidimensional Student’s Life Satisfaction Scale) play a role in this prediction. Results obtained through binary logistic models with samples from Spain (n = 2,724), Algeria (n = 2432), South Africa (n = 2192) and Israel (n = 1914), show that children’s perceptions of safety are predicted by their different perceptions and evaluations of school, home and the nearby area. Perceptions of safety in the nearby area and satisfaction with safety (O.R. = 1.080) contribute to predicting higher levels of satisfaction with life as a whole to a greater extent than scores on the SLSS (O.R. = 1.036) and the BMSLSS (O.R. = 1.050) scales. The country participants live in (especially when combined with satisfaction with safety) and, to a lesser extent gender, also make important contributions. The age group they belong to plays a significant role in predicting higher perceptions of safety at home, in the area nearby, at school, and in predicting higher satisfaction with safety. Results open the door to the introduction of specific interventions (e.g. improving parent-child communication, enhancing public spaces for children to play and promoting children’s participation at school), aimed at promoting higher satisfaction with safety and also indirectly at higher satisfaction with life as a whole, on the basis of achieving positive changes of those factors which make the highest contribution.

     

Cognitive Appraisal Therapy: A Treatment Plan for “Silvia”

The principles and procedures of Cognitive Appraisal Therapy (CAT) are applied to the case of Silvia. The assessment plan focuses on affective, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of personality. The patient evidences self-pity and anger, and rebellion and withdrawal in her interpersonal relations. Key interventions include encouraging positive methods for comforting her feelings, building self-respect by doing what she deems morally right, eliminating self-defined victim status by active pursuit of her goals, and correcting cognitive distortion of self-image and pessimistic forecasts. Other characteristic CAT interventions are also discussed and illustrated.     

On “That Is Not Psychoanalysis”: Ethics as the Main Tool for Psychoanalytic Knowledge and Discussion

“That is not (or that is) psychoanalysis” is a statement that, more often than not, can only remind us that psychoanalysis is divided into many schools and that discussion among them is difficult if not impossible. This will always be the case as long as analysts hold to their respective ontological definitions as if these were impervious to the laws and, most important, to the Ethics of translation. In psychoanalysis our Ethics and our Epistemology are two sides of the same coin, inseparable from our know-how. Our ethical stance is what allows (or impedes) central psychoanalytic facts to be brought into daylight. This principle applies both in the analytic room and in the room where analysts from different schools try to hold a productive discussion. In both instances “translation” is necessarily incomplete; it is therefore recommended to start by looking for the missing part.     

A Model of Mindful Parenting: Implications for Parent–Child Relationships and Prevention Research

This paper introduces a model of “mindful parenting” as a framework whereby parents intentionally bring moment-to-moment awareness to the parent–child relationship. This is done by developing the qualities of listening with full attention when interacting with their children, cultivating emotional awareness and self-regulation in parenting, and bringing compassion and nonjudgmental acceptance to their parenting interactions. First, we briefly outline the theoretical and empirical literature on mindfulness and mindfulness-based interventions. Next, we present an operational definition of mindful parenting as an extension of mindfulness to the social context of parent–child relationships. We discuss the implications of mindful parenting for the quality of parent–child relationships, particularly across the transition to adolescence, and we review the literature on the application of mindfulness in parenting interventions. We close with a synopsis of our own efforts to integrate mindfulness-based intervention techniques and mindful parenting into a well-established, evidence-based family prevention program and our recommendations for future research on mindful parenting interventions.