The initiator of the conference and (together with Sophie de Mijolla-Mellor) conference co-chair, Harold Blum, introduces the objectives of the interdisciplinary and psychoanalytic conference on >Parent–Infant Disturbance: Theory and Therapy.< In the epilogue, the author brings up the coincident Paris terrorist attack of November 13, 2015 – the first day of this two-day conference.
The mother’s intrapsychic mental representation of her infant begins before pregnancy and is modified during pregnancy and thereafter. Parents have conscious expectations and unconscious fantasies about their infant, which are all too often not consistent with reality. Early intervention in infant–parent disturbances is important for repair of the relationship and prevention of later pathogenic development. A clinical example of a mother’s unconscious ambivalent mental representations of her infant is presented.
Trauma is the subject of increasing attention in contemporary psychoanalysis. Its complexities will be explored in a clinical case, emphasizing traumatic experience and unconscious conflict across developmental phases. The patient, a young adult white man began analysis complaining of anxiety and depression. Born to adolescent parents, he had experienced infantile stress and childhood traumatic illness. Needy, greedy, and dependent, he was gratified by the frequency and intimacy of psychoanalysis. Genetic interpretation and reconstruction were particularly important in the analytic process. Analytic progress with attenuation of unconscious conflict and developmental transformation proved enduring after termination.