Frances Tustin Today (the New Library Of Psychoanalysis)

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. Cover 1 Title Page 12 Copyright Page 13 Table of Contents 14 Contributors 16 Introduction to the life and work of Frances Tustin 22 Part I Prenatality through latency 42 1 The perpetuation of an error 44 2 Stuck between two worlds: autistic defenses and the experience of premature birth 60 3 Prenatal trauma and autism 78 4 Further reflections on the construction of the body-ego 95 5 Finding the wavelength: tools in communication with autistic children 110 Part II Adolescence through adulthood 122 6 The use of observation in the psychoanalytic treatment of a 12-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome 124 7 Aspects of the body image and sense of identity in a boy with autism: implications for eating disorders 141 8 Long-term mother-child psychotherapy: infantile autism with cerebellar anomaly 156 9 Autistic phenomena in neurotic patients 175 10 Precipitation anxiety in the analysis of adult patients 184 11 On the concept of an autistic-contiguous position 196 12 Trying to enter the long black branches: some technical extensions for the analysis of autistic states in adults 215 13 Ghosts in the swamp: some aspects of splitting and their relationship to parental losses 235 References 250 Index 263 This book explores some of the ways 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.