Transformative Holding: A Reflection on the Legacy of the Smith School for Social Work Thesis

ABSTRACT

The Smith College School for Social Work thesis offers the student the opportunity to be nurtured into a competent clinician within the holding environment of the advisor–advisee relationship. My master’s thesis focused on caregiver response to infant sleep-related crying. This reflection describes the progression in my thesis process from focusing on how letting an infant “cry it out” neglects the infant’s psychological development to a more nuanced understanding of the caregiver’s subjectivity as central in the infant’s development of regulatory functions. My shift in understanding of the self and self-other relating was only possible through the deeply personal experience of being held within the advisor–advisee relationship. The containing function in this relationship parallels the way in which a “good enough” caregiver nurtures an infant. I conclude with a clinical vignette that exemplifies the expression of my internal transformation.

KEYWORDS:

• holding environment
• good enough mother
• infant crying
• intersubjectivity
• sleep training
• development

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Casey Loughran

Casey Loughran, MSW, LICSW, graduated with a master of social work from Smith College School for Social Work and a bachelor of arts in psychology from the University of California, San Diego. She currently practices clinical social work at Cutchins Programs for Children and Families, Inc., an outpatient clinic in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her postgraduate training includes a 2-year fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis.