Introduction; Chapter 1: What you see is what you get: The nature of perception; Chapter 2: Behaviour as communication: The theatre of the body; Chapter 3: It's not you, it's me: Oedipus framed; Chapter 4: Missing people: The presence of absence; Chapter 5: Getting your own back: Revisiting resistance; Chapter 6: It's not rocket science, it's neuroscience; Index
Dr Sarah Sutton has thirty years’ experience of working with parents, children and adolescents who have suffered adversity and are struggling behaviourally and emotionally. She is author of Being Taken In: The Framing Relationship (Karnac, 2014), and has co-edited the Journal of Child Psychotherapy. She is also the founder of Understanding Children and co-founder of the Learning Studio, teaching, writing and working on the interface between development research and psychoanalytic ideas.
"This book provides an innovative and impressive synthesis of
neurobiological and developmental research with in-depth
psychoanalytic thinking, a synthesis which has profound
implications, both for clinical work but also for our understanding
of life in general, a text for which clinicians and those generally
interested in the challenges of being human, will be extremely
grateful." - Graham Music PhD, Consultant Child and Adolescent
Psychotherapist at the Tavistock and Portman Clinics, adult
psychotherapist in private practice and author of Nurturing
Children (2019), The Good Life (2014) and Nurturing Natures
(2011)"Sarah Sutton is a terrific writer. Her writing is full of
seemingly casual but hugely powerful zest. She happens also to be a
gifted artist and she somehow makes the links between these two,
usually exceedingly difficult, subjects of psychoanalysis and
science totally accessible, alive, exciting and beautiful." - Anne
Alvarez PhD MACP Consultant Child and Adolescent
Psychotherapist"This accessible integration of psychoanalytic
theory and interpersonal neurobiology puts relationships at the
heart of development and the creation of personal meaning. Together
these two approaches are used to open a creative perspective on the
formation and workings of the mind and how, when needed, help may
be offered. Babies employ the skills needed to relate from birth,
although they do not know it, and relationships with parents sway
the consolidation of important neural networks during infancy (and
also, but less so, beyond) that are the foundations upon which the
development of the psyche must build. When significant
relationships are inimical to healthy development, or missing,
small children cannot escape by themselves and so must endure and
adapt. They know no alternative, and without intervention may
eventually base their sense of self on this survival software. This
is a matter of unconscious hardwired expectations of the moment to
come that bias how the world is comprehended and generate a
reaction before now is even noticed. A symptom has been distilled
from a role that had to be played within a family drama. As this
book shows, only with in-depth understanding allied with
compassionate and considered relationships can such misplaced
responses to a past environment of difficult relationships be
changed." - Robin Balbernie, Infant mental health specialist; Child
and adolescent psychotherapist"This is the book we have been
waiting for, a riveting work by Sarah Sutton, who is witty in
writing about serious issues, law-abiding and revolutionary. She
writes with respect about psychoanalysis and makes connections with
ground-breaking neuroscience and relational psychotherapy, helping
to fill the gaps between them. She illuminates the book with both
poetry and science. She talks of ‘silent understanding’ and reading
the book gives an experience of this. It is both comforting and
inspiring. It confronts the modern dilemma that mental health
difficulties lead to more referrals than can ever be met by
clinicians, and optimistically shows that thinking relationally,
not just individually, can take the pathology out of mental health,
and generate a fuller understanding which helps regulation and
recovery. The book helps us understand better not only ourselves,
but also the communities we live in." - Dilys Daws, Honorary
Consultant Child Psychotherapist at the Tavistock and Portman
Clinics, Founding Chair of the Association for Infant Mental Health
UK and co-author of Finding Your Way With Your Baby (2015), First
Prize in Popular Medicine, BMA Medical Books Awards 2016
"This book provides an innovative and impressive synthesis of
neurobiological and developmental research with in-depth
psychoanalytic thinking, a synthesis which has profound
implications, both for clinical work but also for our understanding
of life in general, a text for which clinicians and those generally
interested in the challenges of being human, will be extremely
grateful." – Graham Music PhD, Consultant Child and Adolescent
Psychotherapist at the Tavistock and Portman Clinics, adult
psychotherapist in private practice and author of Nurturing
Children (2019), The Good Life (2014) and Nurturing Natures
(2011)"Sarah Sutton is a terrific writer. Her writing is full of
seemingly casual but hugely powerful zest. She happens also to be a
gifted artist and she somehow makes the links between these two,
usually exceedingly difficult, subjects of psychoanalysis and
science totally accessible, alive, exciting and beautiful." – Anne
Alvarez PhD MACP Consultant Child and Adolescent
Psychotherapist"This accessible integration of psychoanalytic
theory and interpersonal neurobiology puts relationships at the
heart of development and the creation of personal meaning. Together
these two approaches are used to open a creative perspective on the
formation and workings of the mind and how, when needed, help may
be offered. Babies employ the skills needed to relate from birth,
although they do not know it, and relationships with parents sway
the consolidation of important neural networks during infancy (and
also, but less so, beyond) that are the foundations upon which the
development of the psyche must build. When significant
relationships are inimical to healthy development, or missing,
small children cannot escape by themselves and so must endure and
adapt. They know no alternative, and without intervention may
eventually base their sense of self on this survival software. This
is a matter of unconscious hardwired expectations of the moment to
come that bias how the world is comprehended and generate a
reaction before now is even noticed. A symptom has been distilled
from a role that had to be played within a family drama. As this
book shows, only with in-depth understanding allied with
compassionate and considered relationships can such misplaced
responses to a past environment of difficult relationships be
changed." – Robin Balbernie, Infant mental health specialist; Child
and adolescent psychotherapist"This is the book we have been
waiting for, a riveting work by Sarah Sutton, who is witty in
writing about serious issues, law-abiding and revolutionary. She
writes with respect about psychoanalysis and makes connections with
ground-breaking neuroscience and relational psychotherapy, helping
to fill the gaps between them. She illuminates the book with both
poetry and science. She talks of ‘silent understanding’ and reading
the book gives an experience of this. It is both comforting and
inspiring. It confronts the modern dilemma that mental health
difficulties lead to more referrals than can ever be met by
clinicians, and optimistically shows that thinking relationally,
not just individually, can take the pathology out of mental health,
and generate a fuller understanding which helps regulation and
recovery. The book helps us understand better not only ourselves,
but also the communities we live in." – Dilys Daws, Honorary
Consultant Child Psychotherapist at the Tavistock and Portman
Clinics, Founding Chair of the Association for Infant Mental Health
UK and co-author of Finding Your Way With Your Baby (2015), First
Prize in Popular Medicine, BMA Medical Books Awards 2016
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