Lacanian Psychoanalysis with Babies, Children, and Adolescents

'The relevance and specificity of Lacanian psychoanalysis for children had never been properly assessed before the publication of this crisp, intelligent, and highly readable collection of essays by renowned specialists. Here is the original ABC of psychoanalysis with the young: adolescents, babies and children. We will keep learning from these lucid, compelling, and profound elaborations combining insights drawn from Lacan with analyses found in Spielrein, Winnicott, and Dolto. Countless concrete examples and evocative vignettes make this collection come to life on every page.'-- Patricia Gherovici, psychoanalyst and author of Please Select Your Gender and Transgender Psychoanalysis'Carol Owens and Stephanie Farrelly Quinn bring us chapters by clinicians working with child and adolescent subjects suffering from a wide variety of age-old and all-too-modern maladies, predicaments, and family configurations. In addition to a lucid presentation of Francoise Dolto's views about what position to adopt and how to proceed in analytic work with children, the many case discussions provided here should be of interest and value to child therapists of many persuasions.'-- Bruce Fink, Lacanian psychoanalyst'This is a landmark text that will engage practitioners working with children. It marks out new terrain in Lacanian psychoanalysis, but also connects with other traditions and key current challenges and debates posed by children and childhood. This impressive volume connects with wider debates about forms of neoliberal subjectivity now inhabited by children and young people, and also modes and practices of gender and sexual diversity. Both these directions challenge psychoanalytic orthodoxies, as well as highlighting how the figure of the child in analysis reinvigorates core questions of analysis in general - from the status of the Father to the inevitable others materially and bodily engaged in the analysis with the child.'-- Erica Burman, Professor of Education, University of Manchester, and group analyst'With its beautifully delineated clinical examples, drawn from a wide range of international contexts, this book advances the field of Lacanian child psychoanalysis. The work offers a broad and deep introduction to Lacanian theory, and does so in the context of carefully etched clinical portraits. It breaks new clinical ground, exploring institutional care, absent fathers, collateral work with parents, and the effects of "psycho-technologies of consumer capitalism" such as smartphones and tablets. For clinicians new to Lacanian work, this book offers a warm invitation to join a conversation that always puts the interests of the speaking subject first.'-- Michael O'Loughlin, Adelphi University, author of The Subject of Childhood'This book is a fundamental reading in psychoanalysis not only for all those working with children, but also for those working with adults as well. It is important for demonstrating the Lacanian approach to child analysis and also for bringing the work of Francoise Dolto to a wider audience.'-- Danuza Machado, psychoanalyst, member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research and coordinator of its Child Analysis Working Group; founder member of the Maison Verte, UK'This is a particularly stimulating book that vouches for the vitality of the Lacanian movement in psychoanalysis with children. Lacan's distant students show the fruitfulness of his teaching by reinventing psychoanalysis with children today, and taking us further.'-- Alain Vanier, full professor of psychopathology and psychoanalysis, and director of graduate studies at the University of Paris Diderot - Paris 7