Toward a Theory of Child-Centered Psychodynamic Family Treatment: The Anna Ornstein Reader / Edition 1

by Anna Ornstein, Eva Rass

Overview

Toward a Theory of Child-Centered Psychodynamic Family Treatment: The Anna Ornstein Reader offers a clear introduction to Anna Ornstein’s ground-breaking work on psychoanalytic child orientated family therapy. Drawing on her writing from across her long career and including new material, the book sets out her important theoretical work on the mind, self, development, and parental influences, and the therapeutic consequences of these concepts.

Anna Ornstein’s self-psychological work is unique and outstanding. First published in 1974, a time when attachment and affect regulation theory had just started, Ornstein’s work has developed far-reaching ideas, therapeutic concepts, and practicable approaches for psychodynamic children and adolescence therapy, based on the concept of analytic self-psychology, which has anticipated very early results of later affect regulation and attachment research. This kind of treatment considers parental work not as only accompanying, but as central, representing the core of the treatment process. The parental maturation process is directly described, which should enable the parents to accompany their child empathically, and therefore attachment-security enhancing. This treatment concept integrates the later findings of neurobiologically-based attachment and affect regulation theory which emphasizes that intrapsychic and interpersonal experience are in a continuous and everlasting exchange. In this book, Eva Rass offers a better understanding of Ornstein’s approach, an insight into her life and work, and an introduction into the concept of analytic self psychology, followed by a selection of Ornstein’s significant publications, in which the central concern is clearly elaborated, to give the reader a thorough introduction and understanding of her work.

This book will be of great value and interest to professionals working with children and families in psychoanalytic settings, and to students training in child psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and family therapy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367439385
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/21/2020
Pages:	186
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Anna Ornstein, M.D. is a Professor Emerita of Child Psychology at the University of Cincinnati and a Lecturer on Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Eva Rass is a psychotherapist in private practice in Buchen, Germany.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction Eva Rass 1

2 Insights in the life and work of Anna Ornstein Eva Rass 4

3 Insight into the concept of Analytic Self Psychology Eva Rass 14

3.1 Self definition 15

3.2 Selfobject needs 15

3.3 The process of self-development 16

3.4 Disturbing troubles and crisis in psychic development 19

4 Making contact with the inner world of the child Anna Ornstein 22

4.1 Toward a theory of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children 22

4.2 The effect of the theory of treatment on technical considerations 28

4.3 Toward a conceptual integration of intrapsychic and interpersonal factors 35

4.4 Toward a theory of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children 48

5 Parenting as a function of the adult self: a psychoanalytic developmental perspective Anna Ornstein Paul Ornstein 60

5.1 Adaptation, development, and pathogenesis 62

5.2 The concept of the self, the self-selfobject unit, and parental selfobject functions 67

5.3 Parental self-development and parental empathy 71

5.4 Parental dysfunctions: diagnosis and treatment 76

5.5 Clinical examples 80

5.6 Conceptual advances in the study of parenting: a summation 96

6 Anne and Vivienne: the early adolescence of two young teenagers Anna Ornstein 104

6.1 The "softening" of psychic structures during the toddler years and during early adolescence 104

6.2 The relationship between the developmental tasks of toddlerhood and early adolescence 105

6.3 The selfobject needs of the toddler and the early adolescent 106

6.4 Aggression, sexuality, and the cohesion of the self 108

6.5 Anne's and Vivienne's early life experiences 109

6.6 Conclusion 111

7 Little Hans: his phobia and his Oedipus complex ("The Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy," 1909) Anna Ornstein 113

7.1 A historical perspective 113

7.2 Self psychology and the Oedipus complex 114

7.3 Comments of the analysis of Little Ham's horse phobia 116

7.4 A self-psychological interpretation of the phobia 120

7.5 A self psychological perspective on the resolution of the phobia and further comments on the Oedipal phase of development 123

7.6 The father as the therapist 125

7.7 Addendum 125

7.8 Summary 126

8 Changing patterns in parenting: comments on the origin and consequences of unmodified grandiosity Anna Ornstein 130

8.1 Idealization and the transformation of infantile grandiosity and omnipotence 133

8.2 Clinical example 134

8.3 Treatment recommendation 139

8.4 Discussion and summary 140

9 Child-centered family treatment: conceptual framework and clinical implications Anna Ornstein 142

9.1 The conduct of a diagnostic-therapeutic interview: the therapeutic dialogue 144

9.2 Concluding remarks 150

10 Early childhood traumata: adult reorganization Anna Ornstein 152

10.1 Introduction 152

10.2 The children of Terezin (Theresienstadt) 153

10.3 The Harlow studies 155

10.4 The adult lives of the Terezin children 156

10.5 Attachment, mourning and "going on living" 158

10.6 Memory and psychic continuity 159

10.7 Summary 161

11 Closing remarks Eva Rass 165

Permissions 169

Index 170