We are in a cultural era devoted to the cultivation of happiness. The website Brightside offers a list of ten movies that “show the way to happiness.” Very Well Mind offers tips on how to “cultivate a sense of happiness” … Continue reading Building Resilience
It’s a challenging time for working parents with young children. If they are considered essential workers and must leave their homes, they may struggle with childcare needs that are difficult to meet. If they are fortunate enough to continue their jobs by working from home, they may struggle with the competing agendas of work while homeschooling and entertaining their children. Interestingly, with the cancelation of nearly all of children’s organized activities, children are being forced to occupy themselves, to learn to play independently without being directed by an adult. In the New York Times, Kate Rope, author of Strong as … Continue reading Play Under Quarantine
In the first phase of treatment, all of our patients interview us. They are checking to be sure that we will be helpful and not harmful. Patience, the willingness to wait, and curiosity about what is growing beneath the surface of things are, perhaps, two of a psychoanalyst’s most important tools. In intensive psychotherapeutic treatment the analyst needs the capacity to not know, to contain the feeling of not knowing, and to allow the mind to drift and wander. It’s all there in the memory banks, but to be effective in finding it, the analyst must be comfortable living with … Continue reading Review of “A Four-and-a-Half Year Old Boy Who Had Dropped Out of the World – The Most Amazing Analytic Experience I Have Ever Had” Presented by Dr. Martin Silverman
Selma Fraiberg, social worker and psychoanalyst, would have been 100 on March 8. I still give her book, The Magic Years, to new parents as it remains, even after nearly 60 years, a rich and thoughtful exploration of the inner lives of infants and young children. Based in a deep understanding of child development rooted in psychoanalytic theory, Fraiberg, always empathic with the experience of parents, uncovers the meaning of early childhood behavior and offers parents a framework for civilizing their children in healthy and nourishing ways. Fraiberg is also remembered for her seminal article, “Ghosts in the Nursery,” which has been … Continue reading Selma Fraiberg, born March 8, 1918
Beatrice Beebe has been observing mothers and infants for many years. She reveals much of what she has learned in language appropriate for parents, teachers, and clinicians alike in her 2016 book, The Mother-Infant Interaction Picture Book. Beebe has analyzed hours of split screen video in which mothers interact with their 4 month old infants. One of the most astonishing findings from the microanalysis of these videos is: These parent-infant communication patterns predict infant attachment patterns at one year, a key milestone in the infant’s development…An infant’s attachment pattern at one year predicts many aspects of the child’s development, including school … Continue reading Thoughts on The Mother-Infant Interaction Picture Book
Sometimes I get questions from teachers and parents about the value of play therapy. Why, they ask, should students who are behaving badly in the classroom be rewarded by getting to come to my office to play? How will playing with my child improve her behavior? Continue reading “Why Play Therapy?”
I have argued here that play emerges in a transitional space, a space between inner and outer, between me and not me, and between me and you. I have focused on play as an intersubjective phenomenon, but what about play that occurs when someone is alone? Continue reading “What constitutes a viable space for play?”
Between 1943 and 1962, D. W. Winnicott gave over 50 talks broadcast by the BBC. In these talks, given for parents (actually, primarily for mothers), Winnicott discusses what he has observed between mothers and infants and elaborates his theory of human development. Continue reading “Listen to Winnicott”
I interviewed Chris Goedecke, of the Wind School, about the relationship between play and identity in the Dojo. Continue reading Podcast: Transitional Space in the Dojo
In an earlier post, I wrote about the contradictions we in modern society have about play. On one hand, we trivialize play and see it as a waste of time, only appropriate for children, not for adults who should be attending to more serious matters. On the other, we express nostalgia for an era when there was more time for undirected play.
The work of psychoanalyst Paul Verhaeghe offers a framework for understanding this ambivalence and our split views about play. Continue reading “Is there such a thing as too much play? Part 2”
What's so important about play? 