Battle of the dinosaurs: The impact of internalized bad paternal and maternal objects in a three-year-old boy

Abstract

This paper begins with a summary of W. Ronald D. Fairbairn's object relations theory, with particular focus on his ideas of how paternal objects are internalized alongside maternal objects. A case is then presented of a three-year-old boy who experienced deprivation and frustration from both his mother and father, thus initiating the internalization of bad paternal and maternal objects. Assessment and implications for treatment are then discussed using Fairbairn's model as an organizing framework for developing goals and interventions, and monitoring treatment progress.     

The (Neglected) role of the father in Children's mental health

BackgroundAlthough the bulk of the literature on child development, historically, has focused on the significant role of the mother, less attention has been given to that of the father. Therefore, more attention has been given to fathers’ roles in the last 20–30 years.AimThe aim of the current review was to explore the role of the father on a child's development.MethodsAn extensive literature search using 'Psycharticles', ‘PsychInfo’, and ‘Google Scholar’ databases using terms like 'father's role', 'child/children's', 'child development', and 'mental health' was conducted to achieve the objective of the study.ResultsFathers were found to play a significant role in nurturing their children. Fathers are considered to be important for the development of the child's autonomy, the shaping of gender identity, and the development of the moral system of the child. Usually, he is the one who establishes the feeling of security in the child's mind. He is considered to be the protector and defender of the family Freud's position is that the father is the symbol of security, power, and authority for the child.ConclusionAlthough the original aim of the research was to draw a line between parents' roles in the family and shed light on the father's role, the findings suggest that the fundamental concept in nurturing children depends on the complementary roles of parents as children need their parents equally.     

Talent Development in Elite Junior Tennis: Perceptions of Players,Parents, and Coaches

This study examined players,' parents,' and coaches' perceptions of talent development in elite junior tennis. Nine participants (three athletes aged 13–15 yrs, four parents, and two coaches) were engaged in semi-structured interviews, which were transcribed verbatim and subjected to an inductive-deductive analysis procedure. Results revealed six categories associated with adult influence on talent development in tennis (Emotional Support, Tangible Support, Informational Support, Sacrifices, Pressure, and Relationships with Coaches). Overall, the results highlighted that parents appeared to fulfill the most significant roles in terms of providing emotional and tangible support (with the mother being more involved than the father). Parents were perceived as a source of pressure when they became over-involved in competitive settings. The role of the coach was focused on providing technical advice. Findings also showed that parents and players were required to make sacrifices. The main applied implication of this study is that involvement in elite junior tennis is a team effort whereby players, parents, and coaches fulfill specific roles.     

Self-Coherence and Mutuality in the Analytic Dyad: Commentary on Michael Shoshani (Rosenbaum's) Dare to be Human

Michael Shoshani (Rosenbaum's) book Dare to be Human lays bare Michael's emotional relationship with his patient Daniel. Initially, Michael's early childhood relational behavioral patterns are evoked by Daniel's extreme emotional detachment and rejection of Michael as a person. Both analytic partners experienced extreme boundary violations as children in the form of violent beatings, Michael by his father and Daniel by his mother. Michael's mother was overbearing like Daniel's. Both, highly sensitized to intrusions and perceived slights by the other, remain locked in a doer/done to dynamic until Michael successfully breaks through the enactment by learning to stay with Daniel's distress, contain and regulate his own hurt feelings, and provide more space in the relationship by shifting to four times a week and moving Daniel to the couch. Through this process both analytic partners feel safer with each other, deepen their understanding of their own internal object world, and feel intimately engaged with each other. Daniel's life outside the analysis parallels his success in the analytic relationship.     

On becoming a child: Reverie in the psychotherapy of children

My aim in this paper is to examine the role of reverie in facilitating the development of the child‐subject, that is, the child's continuous motion towards subjectivity. I begin by briefly reviewing the concept of reverie and proceed with an examination of elements I believe are fundamental and common to both reverie and child psychotherapy, that is, primary thought processes and primitive impulses. I then describe and demonstrate the atmosphere created by these elements using three examples from the psychotherapy of 8 year‐old Jonathan. Next, I discuss an intersubjective parallel of Bion's reverie and a developmentally oriented version of Ogden's reverie, focusing on its relation to processes of destruction and recognition. I argue that reverie provides the recognition of the child's struggle for his own birth and growth as a subject, that is, of his child‐subject. Finally, I refer to the presence of reverie from the primary preoccupation of mother and father till the child's reverie of himself, his day‐dreaming.     

Factors Affecting the Psychodiagnostic Significance of Color Perception

50 males, 17 and 18 years of age, and their natural parents were given the Blacky Defense Preference Inventory to determine if there are commonalities of defense preferences within families and within sex groups.

The results tended to support the hypothesis that male adolescents manifest defense preferences more similar to those of their father than to nonrelated adult males but failed to support a comparable hypothesis concerning the adolescent's similarity of defense preferences to his mother versus nonrelated adult females. The adolescent males did not reveal defense preferences more similar to those of their father than of their mother nor were sex differences in defense preferences observed. An additional finding suggested that the adult males are more heterogeneous in their defense preferences than are adult females.     

RECOVERING THE FATHER IN MIND AND FLESH: HISTORY,TRIADIC FUNCTIONING,AND DEVELOPMENTAL IMPLICATIONS

This paper aims to restore the father and paternal function to their rightful place alongside the mother and maternity in order to counter the prevailing matricentric, dyadic bias in psychoanalytic theory and technique. The author contends that both the symbolic and the actual, flesh‐and‐blood father are necessary to optimize his child's development. The paternal function inevitably operates in a triadic matrix; thirdness is always psychically in existence—with the father ever present in the mother's unconscious mind—and the paternal third is necessary to open up symbolic space. As an embodied other, the actual father, both as a separating agent and an attracting object, is called upon to recognize his child's otherness throughout the inescapable father–child rivalries, neglect, and desire.     

Clinical Commentary

Abstract

This paper is the narrative of a first-time father with a son born seven weeks early by Caesarean section. Against the anxiety and trauma of his infant's birth and his wife's illness, another inner darker drama is being relived. Michael shows all the wounds of a battered child. He asks two awesome questions - Will I be to my son as my father was to me? Will my son be to me as I was to my father? Fearful and at first unvoiced questions, the developing interviews gave them a voice. We respected Michael's sharing of the early and fearful days and nights when his infant first came home. We sometimes found it hard to empathize with his running away to hide in work, until we understood what he was hiding from. Most poignant was his struggle with his anger and hurt with his father and his desire to understand, ‘Why?’, so that he would not be like this to his son. We saw a sensitive revelation of life being born inside him anew, as he made contact with his real infant and his psychic infant within. Of particular interest was the therapeutic use of the research interview space and the interviewer.     

Commentary on Paper by Ken Corbett

A report on the third analysis of a 41-year-old man who had been a feminine boy is used as a vehicle to describe the idiographic aspects of this way of being as well as to specify the input of the environment—parents, analysts, community. The role of self with mother, self with father, and self with mother and father together representations is explored and Zadie Smith's concept of dual citizenship and multiple internal voices is featured as an integrating and explanatory concept. The ways in which each analysis highlights different aspects of the patient's conflicts and dilemmas and reflects successive intrapsychic organizations is also explored.     

Conversion Symptoms and Psychoanalysis in a Second Language

Abstract

Conversion symptoms involve a regression, where the patient appears to have lost access to previously available modes of verbal expression. Instead movements, sensations, postures, gestures, and visceral processes express emotions and unconscious wishes directly. Patients who are analyzed in a language other than their mother tongue, without access to the language of their early years, may rely on the body to express powerful affect and fantasies. A patient who displayed pseudoseizures on the couch is presented, looking specifically at how this man's conversion reaction may relate to the fact that the language of the analysis is not his mother tongue.     

Father–child and mother–child interaction in families with a child feeding disorder: The role of paternal involvement

To date, research about feeding disorder (FD) has focused almost exclusively on the mother–child dyad, ignoring fathers' roles. The current study investigated father–child interactions with children having FD. The sample consisted of 67 children (1–3 years old) and their mothers and fathers. Thirty‐four children, diagnosed with a nonorganic‐based FD (FD group) and 33 children without an FD (control group) were matched for age, gender, birth order, and maternal education. Data were collected during home visits. Mothers were interviewed about their and the father's involvement in childcare. In addition, mother–child and father–child interactions were videotaped during play and feeding. Both mothers and fathers from the FD group experienced less positive parent–child interactions than did parents in the control group. Furthermore, mothers in the FD group reported greater maternal versus paternal childcare involvement than did control group mothers. Finally, FD group mothers exhibited more parental sensitivity than did fathers during feeing interactions; however, this difference was observed only when coupled with low paternal involvement. In families where fathers were highly involved, no difference was evident in paternal and maternal sensitivity. These findings highlight the importance of fathers' involvement, especially in families with children exhibiting an FD.     

Synchrony in the Triad: A Microlevel Process Model of Coparenting and Parent‐Child Interactions

Guided by a microanalytic approach to the study of relationships, we assessed parent, infant, and coparental behaviors during triadic interactions in 94 parents and their 5‐month‐old firstborn child. Relational behaviors in each family subsystem—mother‐infant, father‐infant, and coparenting—were microcoded. Marital satisfaction and infant temperament were self‐reported. No differences were found in the infants' behavior toward mother and father or in the time spent with each parent. Mothers' and fathers' relational behavior during parent‐infant episodes were generally comparable, yet mothers vocalized more and the latency to father's displaying positive affect was longer. Conditional probabilities indicated that under conditions of coparental mutuality, fathers showed more positive behaviors than mothers. Lag‐sequential analysis demonstrated that change in the infant's social focus between parents followed change in coparental behavior. Fathers' coparental mutuality was independently predicted by maternal behavior during mother‐child episodes, father marital satisfaction, and infant difficult temperament, whereas mothers' coparental mutuality was only linked with fathers' relational behavior. Results highlight the importance of including a microlevel perspective on the family system at the first stages of family development.     

Detriangulation of Absent Fathers in Single-Parent Black Families: Techniques of Imagery

The projection of the mother's unresolved feelings about an absent father onto one or more of her children-often the eldest son expected to assume the role of parental child-is an obstacle frequently encountered in therapy with single-parent Black families. Acknowledgment and resolution of these feelings by the mother is an important step toward reestablishing generational boundaries and improving communication between mother and children. It is suggested that the empty chair procedure and the use of family photographs are two interventions that can be used within the context of structural and/or transgenerational family therapies to help the mother separate her feelings about the absent father from her feelings about her children. Models for the use of both approaches and the potential benefits of each is presented. The successful outcome of either technique may depend, however, on variables in the family's history and the stage of therapy during which the techniques are introduced.     

Mock juror's perceptions of a child witness passing or failing a truth and lies discussion or promising to tell the truth

This study examined the effect of a child passing or failing the UK truth and lies discussion (TLD) compared with the Canadian promise to tell the truth on mock jurors' decisions regarding witness credibility and truthfulness and defendant guilt. Ninety-two participants read a vignette that described a child witnessing his father physically attacking his mother. The vignette was manipulated for witness age (age 4 years and age 8 years) and TLD performance/promise. Supporting the hypotheses, participants rated the witness's credibility and truthfulness significantly higher after a witness passed a TLD and after promising to tell the truth. The age of the child witness did not significantly affect jurors' decision making. The results are discussed in relation to arguments regarding the abolition of the UK's TLD in favour of introducing a promise to tell the truth.     

Early Stages of a Psychoanalytic Treatment: The Case of Laura

This case analysis describes a young woman's jouney to integrate the experiences of having an unresponsive and nonnurturant mother and an invasive, seductive, and chronically anxious father, who functioned as the loving and responsive parent. From the outset of the analysis, mother's difficulties in attachment and empathy with her daughter's needs or fears, and father's overstimulating and intrusive relationship to his daughter, were present in the patient's dreams and in the transference. The early stage of treatment reported here describes the patient's efforts to find a self-regulatory balance between states of extreme overstimulation and excitement and of withdrawal and a fear of invasion.     

Adolescents' relationships with mother and father and their links to the quality of romantic relationships: A classification approach

Adolescents' relationships with parents are considered to be a major learning source and emotional base for developing expectations and styles of behaviour in close relationships. Using a longitudinal sample of late adolescents from nuclear families drawn from the German Family Panel pairfam (N = 720; mean age: 18.6 years), we investigated how adolescents' relationships with both parents influenced their romantic relationship quality one year later. Bagged (Averaged) Binary Recursive Partitioning was used to compare features of adolescents' relationships with mother and father (relatedness, negative conflict, emotional insecurity, and parental dominance) in respect of their importance in predicting similar aspects of romantic relationship quality. Overall, our findings suggest some degree of domain-specific continuities in adolescents' relationships with parents and partner, particularly for negative conflict, as well as more global effects for most features of the parent–adolescent relationship. Emotional insecurity with mother was most broadly linked to all features of adolescents' romantic relationship. Overall, adolescents' relationship with mother was found to be more influential than their relationship with father. The findings are discussed with reference to a behavioural systems perspective and attachment theory.     

Containment and ‘rational health’: Moran and psychoanalysis

The paper focuses on Richard Moran's account (in Authority and Estrangement) of the distinction between attitudes that meet, and alternatively fail to meet, his transparency criterion for what he calls rational health, and compare this with the psychoanalytic distinction between contained and uncontained states of mind. On the face of it, Moran's distinction appears to be a useful theoretical deepening of the psychoanalytic distinction. On closer examination, however, it appears that (a) rational health is a more demanding standard than containment, so the rationally unhealthy contains much that is mentally (quite) healthy; and (b) more seriously, some states that meet the “transparency” condition are manifestly mentally unhealthy. So transparency needs to be supplemented by an independently understood notion of containment to approach a realistic norm of mental health/ill health.     

Parents’ postnatal depressive symptoms and their children's academic attainment at 16 years: Pathways of risk transmission

The aim of the study was to examine whether parents’ increased postnatal depressive symptoms predicted children's academic attainment over time and whether the parent–child relationship, children's prior academic attainment, and mental health mediated this association. We conducted secondary analyses on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children data (12,607 mothers, 9,456 fathers). Each parent completed the Edinburgh-Postnatal Depression Scale at 8 weeks after the child's birth (predictor) and a questionnaire about the mother–child and father–child relationship at 7 years and 1 month (mediator). The children's mental health problems were assessed with the teacher version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire at 10–11 years (mediator). We used data on the children's academic attainment on UK Key Stage 1 (5–7 years; mediator) and Key Stage 4 (General Certificate of Secondary Education 16 years) (outcome). We adjusted for the parents’ education, and child gender and cognitive ability. The results revealed that parents’ depressive symptoms at 8 weeks predicted lower academic performance in children at 16 years. Mothers’ postnatal depressive symptoms had an indirect effect through children's mental health problems on academic outcomes at 16 years via negative mother–child relationship, and prior academic attainment. There was a significant negative indirect effect of fathers’ postnatal depressive symptoms on academic attainment at 16 years via negative father–child relationship on child mental health. The findings suggest that the family environment (parental mental health and parent–child relationship) and children's mental health should be potential targets for support programmes for children of depressed parents.     

Development and evaluation of the psychometric properties of the parents' Perceptions of Physical Activity Importance and their Children's Ability Questionnaire (PPPAICAQ)

ObjectivesThe purpose of the present study was to develop and psychometrically evaluate a new measure of parental perceptions grounded in the Eccles' parental socialization framework: the Parents' Perceptions of Physical Activity Importance and their Children's Ability Questionnaire (PPPAICAQ).DesignCross-sectional with self-reported questionnaires.MethodThe total sample comprised 1100 parents of children (6–11 years old) and was randomly divided in third (one calibration and two validation samples). Data were analyzed with reliability, confirmatory factor analyses (CFA), multi-group CFAs as well as with correlational analyses.ResultsResults of the initial confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) of the 2-factor 12-item model on the calibration sample resulted in a poor fit to the data. Re-estimation of the PPPAICAQ resulted in the deletion of 4 initial items. The 2-factor 8-item model revealed a good fit to the data for the three samples. Results of two multiple-group CFAs showed that the final model was partially invariant across the father and mother as well as the boy and girl samples. The patterns of relationships between parents' motivation, parents' support and the PPPAICAQ subscales provided evidence for the criterion-related validity of the PPPAICAQ.ConclusionThis study provided support for the reliability and validity of the PPPAICAQ. The PPPAICAQ is an instrument that will be useful for theoretically-driven research on parental socialization influence on children’ PA.