The ideas presented in this book are the outcome of years of conducting psychotherapy and psychoanalysis with adults and children, working with mother infant groups, and studying infant development. Working with mother infant pairs as an observer, rather than as a therapist, is for a psychoanalyst what time travel would be for an archeologist, albeit infinitely more accessible. One is privileged to observe the early relationship "in statu nascendi," as it unfolds, whereas reconstructing it in psychoanalysis is a slow, complex process, burdened by false starts, doubts and painstaking (sometimes painful) examination of the counter-transference. Observing normal infants in their natural environment allows one also to appreciate the rich variety of infant personalities and their impact on the caregivers.The book examines the clinical implications of innate developmental individuality. The authors present an outline of the interdependence of the developmental sequences: perceptual, motor, cognitive and emotional. The book examines the clinical and theoretical issues, as well as examining some recent advances in neuro-behavioral sciences."

The book examines the clinical implications of innate developmental individuality. The authors present a model of what they call "developmentally informed" therapy, based on the assumption that biologically determined (or co-determined) maladjusted behaviours and deficiencies of ego functions cannot be resolved by interpretation of an unconscious c

In psychoanalysis the term "countertransference", coined by Freud, describes the complex emotional relation between therapist and patient. The term is nowadays used in a broad sense, referring to the entire range of emotions experienced by the therapist/analyst covering many types of therapeutic process. Today's mental-health practitioners are called upon to deal with a wide variety of challenges, some of them highly emotionally-charged, such as child abuse, gender identity or catastrophic loss. This book comprises three main parts: Part I -- The History of Countertransference; Part II -- The Clinical Challenge and Part III -- The Biological Roots of Counter- transference. After essays in Part I introducing the subject and the history of the concept, as reflected in the classic literature (Kernberg, Heimann, Searles, Balint and Main), Part II presents a range of clinical challenges, analysed by contributor colleagues with extensive experience in these and similar issues. It also addresses Holocaust survivor issues, and child survivor experiences of the Nazi euthanasia programme. The study of counter-transference, like other psychoanalytic issues, has recently become enriched by the striking advances in the study of the living brain and of animal behaviour (the published works of Panksepp, Hoffer). Part III engages with recent findings regarding the biological roots that have implications for the understanding of counter-transference. A Summary to the volume presents the overall conclusions to the findings presented in the three parts. The book is intended for mental health and other human service practitioners, such as physicians, educators, jurists and human resource managers.