‘Crying out for help’: containing primitive anxieties. From infant observation to under-5’s brief therapeutic intervention

ABSTRACT

This paper describes a brief under 5’s intervention with a family who referred themselves to a hospital early intervention service. Material from the full piece of clinical work with the family is presented and discussed. The second session is presented in detail to give a sense of the distinctive features of the brief intervention for under-5’s. The whole family was invited to attend, and the work was shared by two psychotherapists trained in the under 5s model of brief work. The significance of psychoanalytic infant observation in this type of intervention is highlighted. Infant observation enables the therapists to gather detailed impressions and thoughts to make meaning and to connect verbal and non-verbal communication between children, parents and therapists. The end-result is the creation of a transitional space, in which differentiation, creative thinking and change can take place.

KEYWORDS:

• Infant observation
• brief under 5’s intervention
• transference-countertransference
• co-therapists
• containment
• omnipotence
• primitive anxieties

Disclosure statement

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

Notes on contributors

Vassilopoulou Vassiliki, MSc, Psychologist, is a child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapist, member of the Hellenic Association of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (H.A.C.A.P.P.). She now works in private practice with previous experience in mental health services for children and adolescents in the private sector. She has a special interest in early therapeutic intervention.

Tselika Maria, MSc, Clinical Psychologist, Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, is a member of the Hellenic Association of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. She has worked for several years at the psychoanalytically oriented ‘Early Intervention Programme' addressed to families with infants/young children in the Department of Child Psychiatry, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Medical School, ‘Aghia Sophia' Children’s Hospital. She has contributed to the introduction of this type of psychotherapeutic work with children on the autistic spectrum. She currently works privately.

Notes

1 A first version of this paper was presented in the 5th Infant Observation Workshop, Oslo, Norway, 2019, organised by the observation workshop organising committee represented by Esthonia, Greece, Italy, Poland, local orginising committee IBUP (Norway) under the auspices of EFPP.