Description
This is a book about attachment, separation, loss, and mourning, and about young patients’ creative responses to these phenomena. While individual chapters inform us of these processes in the framework of ending treatment, implicitly we are observing them in a wider context, that of enhancing our understanding of normal development. The rich clinical material in this collection enables us to examine the type and depth of the child or adolescent’s continually evolving relationship with the analyst, and the transformations that occur as the transference relationship undergoes various phases of relinquishment. Also, there is ample material for the reader to explain the various ways in which parents become attached to, and separate from, the child’s analyst and for us to examine the analyst’s countertransference responses and counterreactions.
It is hoped that this volume will contribute to our understanding of the psychoanalysis of children and adults, that it will demonstrate the value of a careful study of analytic process at termination for those who practice psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and that it will be helpful for those who study the process of grief, mourning and creative forms of healing.
