What Can the Matter Be? Therapeutic Interventions with Parents, Infants and Young Children

This volume is the result of over twenty years of therapeutic interventions with families within the Tavistock Clinic's Under Fives Service. It describes in detail the process of understanding young children's communications and behavior and the dynamics of family relationships within the consulting room in a lively, accessible style. It covers common themes in work with young children such as disruptive, angry behavior, separation and sleep difficulties, and problems in the parent/couple relationship. This book is essential reading for all early years professionals hoping to gain a greater understanding of the technique, observational skills and theory which underlie a psychodynamic approach to work with the under fives.

This book describes the particular approach to clinical work with under fives that has been developed at the Tavistock Clinic. It sets out new approaches in the understanding and treatment of psychological disturbance in children, adolescents, and adults, both as individual and in families.

Series Editor's Preface -- Foreword -- Preface -- Introduction -- Theory and Practice -- Early developments -- Brief work with parents of infants -- The relation of infant observation to clinical practice in an under-fives counselling service -- Infant–parent psychotherapy: Selma Fraiberg’s contribution to understanding the past in the present -- Later developments -- The process of change in under-fives work -- A slow unfolding—at double speed: therapeutic interventions with parents and their young children -- A sinking heart: whose problem is it? Under-fives work in the surgery of a general practitioner -- Common Themes in work with under Fives -- Challenging and disruptive behaviour -- Anger between children and parents: how can we help? -- Disruptive and distressed toddlers: the impact of undetected maternal depression on infants and young children -- Where the wild things are: tantrums and behaviour problems in two under-fives boys -- The parent couple and oedipal issues -- Locating the ghost in the nursery: the importance of the parental couple -- Father “there and not there”: the concept of a “united couple” in families with unstable partnerships -- Oedipal issues in under-fives families: creating a space for thinking -- Separation and loss; weaning and growth -- Spanning presence and absence: separation anxiety in the early years -- Sleeping and feeding problems: attunement and daring to be different -- Holding the balance: life and death in the early years