Transforming Infantile Trauma in Analytic Work with Children and Adults

The Clinical Writings of Alessandra Cavalli

Martha Stevns, Lucinda Hawkins, Martha Stevns, Lucinda Hawkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032214672
• eBook ISBN: 9781000682755
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This vivid and moving volume presents the clinical work and writings of Alessandra Cavalli, an internationally known child and adult psychoanalyst who taught and supervised widely, ran infant observation seminars in the UK and Europe and was closely involved in the development of child analysis training in Russia.

Informed by a deep knowledge of theory, each chapter draws on many strands of both psychoanalytic and Jungian thought, integrating multiple analytic languages into a coherent clinical language specific to Cavalli. The book includes 11 of her most important papers about work with children and adults, with an introduction by the distinguished Jungian psychoanalyst Warren Colman.

Her work was primarily concerned with the impact of trauma on the developing self and the importance of weathering emotional storms in search of meaning, and the book will be fascinating reading for clinicians of different psychoanalytic approaches working with adults and children as well as students of psychotherapy and counselling.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Endorsements
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About the author
• Editors’ biographies
• Editors’ note
• Thinking the unthinkable: Trauma, defence and early states of mind in the work of Alessandra Cavalli
• 1 Casper or ‘the cabinet of horrors’
• 2 Power cut in the countertransference
• 3 On receiving what has gone astray, on finding what has got lost
• 4 Transgenerational transmission of indigestible facts: From trauma, deadly ghosts and mental voids to meaning-making interpretations
• 5 From affect to feelings and thoughts: From abuse to care and understanding
• 6 Clinging, gripping, holding, containment: Reflections on a survival reflex and the development of a capacity to separate
• 7 From not knowing to knowing: On early infantile trauma involving separation
• 8 Giving voice to psychic pain: The British-Mexican connection, on the vicissitudes of creating a home for street children
• 9 Identification – obstacle to individuation, or: On how to become ‘me’
• 10 Noah’s Ark: Technical and theoretical implications concerning the use of metaphor in the treatment of trauma
• 11 Continuous becoming or the experience of coming into being
• Index