Clinical Perspectives on Reflective Parenting

In implementing the principles of enhancing mentalization in parents and therewith in their children, this book details a well-reasoned, achievable strategy and program for optimizing the mother-child relationship. In that, it is a valuable contribution to the promotion of healthy psychological development and takes us meaningfully toward the prevention of experience-derived-emotional-disorders in the children. This book is a most welcome addition to the increasing efforts by psychoanalytic health professionals in fulfilling Freud’s (1933) optimism that psychoanalysis may contribute most meaningfully to the next generation’s upbringing. -- Henri Parens, MD, professor of Psychiatry, Thomas Jefferson University; training and supervising analyst (adult and child), Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, PA; author of Renewal of Life—Healing from the Holocaust
All the latest findings in the neurobiology of the developing brain validate the wisdom of the ages—that how we raise our children has lifelong implications. In this most timely volume, Etezady and Davis have assembled an enlightened, practical, and very useful guide to those who help parents with their child rearing. Parenting groups in clinical settings throughout the country help inform the authors of their findings. Neurobiological correlates strengthen the conviction of their methods. With an emphasis on teaching parents how to consider that their children not only have minds, but minds of their own, this approach has enormous value and applicability. This book is very readable and highly recommended. -- Ira Brenner, MD, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia
Continuing in the tradition of the highly respected Vulnerable Child series, this volume brings our attention to the importance of parents keeping the child’s subjective states in mind. Distinguished psychoanalysts like Regina Pally and Leon Hoffman offer illuminating insights regarding ‘reflective parenting’ and elucidate the intricate dialectics between temperament and upbringing, between neurobiology and interpersonal influences, and between emotional and instructive modes of relating to children and adolescents. They also discuss ways to foster the parents’ creativity and resilience and describe their fascinating work with Parent-Child groups. Clinical Perspectives on Reflective Parenting is highly instructive not only for clinicians working with children and their parents but for mental health professionals in general. -- Salman Akhtar, MD, is professor of psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College and training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.