This issue is the second part of a first one, edited one year ago and named “Baby observation and analytic presence”. Our path has therefore started from the silent, not judging neither interpreting reflection about a new-born and its care context and now instead tries to analyse the possibilities of an active therapeutic work with the family group.
In the first issue we wondered indeed what the baby observation could teach to an analyst in training. Doing so, we particularly emphasized that this path puts the observer in direct contact with archaic psychic quotas that always remain active in the psyche and that should never be forgotten by the analyst, even when he is working with adults. We now notice that the psychological configuration of the family that is experienced “in construction” in the baby observation, remains central in the therapeutic work with families as well. Indeed, as and more than the observation, the psychoanalytic therapeutic work with the family group allows to reach and understand the original psychic structure on which the family is based and within which the children individualities are structured.
The family group is a complex system, made up of many different levels and subgroups (the same with which the baby observation allows contact). Part of the family group is, in fact, the parental couple, which originally was the conjugal couple and which is still affected by the psychic mode and history of both members; also the couple or the subgroup of the siblings, as well as the couples formed by each of the two parents with each child. Read more
