Clinical studies on parent–infant psychotherapy pre- and post-COVID-19 pandemic ‘Making the best of a bad job’ (1)

ABSTRACT

In his last writing in 1979, Bion, aged 81, described how ‘when two personalities meet, an emotional storm is created’ and the way that psychotherapy can only ever aim to ‘make the best of a bad job’ by turning that storm between the two people in the room to good account. This paper, whose title refers to Bion’s famous statement, complements a publication by Micotti and Pozzi, on a literature review regarding this topic. The paper describes clinical vignettes from psychoanalytic psychotherapy with parents, infants and children underfive seen in person, then online, in a Specialist National Health Service. Some technical issues in the move from in-person to online work as well as its impact on families and therapists are highlighted here.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19 pandemic
• online psychoanalytic psychotherapy
• mourning and melancholia
• autistic defences
• reparatory guilt

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria E. Pozzi Monzo

Maria Pozzi Monzo, Born in Italy, living in London since 1979. Trained as a child and adolescent psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic and adult psychotherapist at the BAP - now BPF. She has worked in C.A.M.H.S. for over 30 years and privately specialising in parent-infant psychotherapy, working for PIP- UK in Enfield then volunteering in the Wandsworth Underfive C.A.M.H.S Services. She is a training child and adolescent psychotherapist in various British psychotherapy training and abroad and lectures in England and abroad. She has published extensively on her clinical work. Her most recent books are: “The Buddha and the Baby” and “Neurodevelopmental Parent-Infant Psychotherapy and Mindfulness”. She is married with no children. Winner of the Third Annual International Frances Tustin Memorial Prize and Lectureship, with a paper entitled: “The Use of Observation in the Treatment of a Twelve-Year-Old Boy with Asperger's Syndrome”. Los Angeles, November 1999.