Frances Tustin Today explores some of the ways and means by which Tustin's work has enabled psychoanalytic clinicians to enter into the elemental domain of sensation: what Bion called the 'proto-mental' area of the psyche-soma. Through detailed clinical contributions of several of her exponents worldwide, this book demonstrates how her ideas -- rooted in decades of work with children on the autistic spectrum -- have influenced and are being expanded, extended and applied to the treatment of ordinary patients from early childhood through adulthood. The contributors to this volume represent a selection of the contemporary thinking that organically grew out of Tustin's discoveries, and show that Tustin's model has added new dimensions to the fields of infant observation, family therapy and neuro-psychology. Each chapter is augmented by demonstrable clinical experience. Frances Tustin Today is a valuable resource for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, educators and parents who are interested in learning more about this uniquely independent clinical observer's findings and their impact upon the treatment of autistic states in children, adolescents and adults by contemporary workers in the field of mental health. Judith L. Mitrani, and Theodore Mitrani, are Fellows of The International Psycho-Analytical Association, Training and Supervising Psychoanalysts at The Psychoanalytic Center of California in Los Angeles. They are founding members of the Board of Trustees of The Frances Tustin Memorial Trust, and authors, editors, translators and teachers in the private practice of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy with Adults and Children in Los Angeles, California.

An extraordinary depiction of one analyst's efforts to receive and respond to the vivid impressions of her patients raw and sometimes even unmentalized experiences as they are highlighted in the transference-countertransference connection. Mitrani attempts to feel, suffer, mentally transform, and, finally, verbally construct for and with the patient possible meanings for those immediate versions of lifes earliest experiences as they are re-enacted in the therapeutic relationship. She uses insights from this therapeutic work to contribute to the metapsychology of British and American object relations as well as to the psychoanalytic theory of technique. In these eleven essays, Dr Mitrani masterfully integrates the work of Klein, Winnicott, Bion and Tustin as she leads us on an expedition through primitive emotional territories. She clears the way toward detecting and understanding the survival function of certain pathological manoeuvres deployed by patients when confronted by unthinkable anxieties. In her vivid accounts of numerous clinical cases, she provides and demonstrates the tools needed to effect a transformation of unmentalized experiences within the context of the therapeutic relationship.

'Judith Mitrani's latest work beautifully illuminates some incompletely explored areas of psychoanalytic thinking... Throughout this work we become impressed with the presence of a versatile and innovative observer, thinker, clinician, and integrator with an unusual range of knowledge. Dr Mitrani's is a new, valuable, and most welcome voice in psychoanalysis.' - James S. Grotstein, North American Vice President, International Psychoanalytical Association

Frances Tustin Today explores some of the ways and means by which Tustin's work has enabled psychoanalytic clinicians to enter into the elemental domain of sensation: what Bion called the 'proto-mental' area of the psyche-soma. Through detailed clinical contributions of several of her exponents worldwide, this book demonstrates how her ideas -- rooted in decades of work with children on the autistic spectrum -- have influenced and are being expanded, extended and applied to the treatment of ordinary patients from early childhood through adulthood. The contributors to this volume represent a selection of the contemporary thinking that organically grew out of Tustin's discoveries, and show that Tustin's model has added new dimensions to the fields of infant observation, family therapy and neuro-psychology. Each chapter is augmented by demonstrable clinical experience. Frances Tustin Today is a valuable resource for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, educators and parents who are interested in learning more about this uniquely independent clinical observer's findings and their impact upon the treatment of autistic states in children, adolescents and adults by contemporary workers in the field of mental health. Judith L. Mitrani, and Theodore Mitrani, are Fellows of The International Psycho-Analytical Association, Training and Supervising Psychoanalysts at The Psychoanalytic Center of California in Los Angeles. They are founding members of the Board of Trustees of The Frances Tustin Memorial Trust, and authors, editors, translators and teachers in the private practice of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy with Adults and Children in Los Angeles, California.