Abstract of Papers; March 2018 Issue by Alexandra Harrison
Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond, 2018
In this article, foundational ideas for investing in infant mental health as well as institutiona... more In this article, foundational ideas for investing in infant mental health as well as institutionalised children are explored. In infant mental health, there are three foundational ideas (1) stressful life experience can harm brain development during pregnancy and in the first months of life; (2) the parent-infant relationship can moderate at least in part the effects of this stress; (3) nurses and other health workers can support the infant-parent relationship and in that way promote healthy development of the child and of the adult the child will become. The author, Alexander Harrison, describes a model to support the parent-infant relationship in the form of training in infant mental health offered by a non-profit, Supporting Child Caregivers (SCC) to nurses and other health workers. In addition to the training, an SCC team is exploring the development of 'nudges', strategies to encourage the sustainability of the training. In working with institutionalised children, Monisha Nayar-Akhtar describes problems that are encountered in the care of the children and proposes alternative ways of viewing the care and management of these children. Drawing from cultural and social theorists, these ideas while acknowledging the insights provided by attachment theory, offer socio and culturally informed ideas that broaden our understanding of working with institutionalised children in the South Asian regions of the world. BACKGROUND Infant mental health is actually the cornerstone of a healthy and successful life. That is because the development of the infant's nervous system during pregnancy and in the first years of the child's life forms the basis of a set of core competencies-including the ability to focus attention, make transitions flexibly, inhibit impulses, plan actions towards future goals and make and sustain trusting and reciprocal relationships. All this starts at the beginning of life.
Abstract of Papers; September 2019 Issue by Alexandra Harrison
Institutionalised Children Exploration and Beyond (ICEB), 2019
What do child caregivers bring from their own childhood experiences to their work with the childr... more What do child caregivers bring from their own childhood experiences to their work with the children they care for? Such influences on caregiving behaviour have been studied in relation to parents and children, especially mothers. Multiple psychological theories – psychoanalytic theory, attachment theory and various theories of infant research – all indicate the powerful influence of one’s own parental experiences on parenting behaviour. The adverse effects of these hidden factors, referred to as ‘ghosts in the nursery’ by Fraiberg et al. (2005) in their classic 1975 article, also affect the child caregivers’ behaviour towards children in orphanages and other alternative care institutions. To provide a contrast to ‘ghosts’, Lieberman et al. refer to the effects of positive experiences in childhood as ‘angels in the nursery’. This article provides survey information on the
prevalence of 10 adverse childhood experiences of child caregivers, using survey results for teachers as a control group. This comparison indicates that caregivers in South India have more ‘ghosts’ from their own childhood that are likely to adversely affect their caregiving. This situation suggests
the need to develop compensatory actions to help the child caregivers – some of which are identified in this article – so that the children in their care will experience ‘angels’ during their childhood that will promote their emotional growth and their own future parenting.
Papers by Alexandra Harrison
Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond
Child labour is a global problem that affects children’s lives. Children engage in work that is p... more Child labour is a global problem that affects children’s lives. Children engage in work that is physically, mentally, and emotionally harmful. Previous studies have found that exposure to work as a child is associated with adverse mental health outcomes, and severity is related to the intensity and type of work. India is ranked highest in terms of children in labour in South Asia, according to ILO estimates. The Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation (KSCF) is a non-profit organization focused on addressing the problem of child labour in India. It works to rescue children from bonded labour and return them to their families or place them in rehabilitation centres. KSCF partnered with the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and Medical Aid Films to create a consultation program that aims to support the children and the caregivers at the rehabilitation centres. The program includes a series of short animated films, a trauma training curriculum, and ongoing case consultation wi...
Infant Mental Health Journal
The Newborn Behavioral Observations (NBO) system is a relationship‐based tool that helps parents ... more The Newborn Behavioral Observations (NBO) system is a relationship‐based tool that helps parents recognize their infant's competencies and learn their behavioral cues, with the goals of enhancing parental responsiveness and satisfaction in the infant‐parent relationship. In our study, a pediatrician integrated the NBO into 44 pediatric health care visits of infants in rural Pakistan villages, under the remote guidance of two U.S.‐based child psychiatrists. A clinician then gave the mothers a survey about their experience of the NBO and found that the mothers were highly satisfied, reporting greater appreciation of their infant's strengths, greater understanding of their infant's behavioral cues, stronger attachment to their infant, and greater self‐confidence as a mother. In their consideration of these results, the authors explore cultural reasons for the mothers’ responses and generate hypotheses to inform an outcome study of a similar intervention. This was a feasibil...
Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2021
Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2020
Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond, 2018
In this article, foundational ideas for investing in infant mental health as well as institutiona... more In this article, foundational ideas for investing in infant mental health as well as institutionalised children are explored. In infant mental health, there are three foundational ideas (1) stressful life experience can harm brain development during pregnancy and in the first months of life; (2) the parent-infant relationship can moderate at least in part the effects of this stress; (3) nurses and other health workers can support the infant-parent relationship and in that way promote healthy development of the child and of the adult the child will become. The author, Alexander Harrison, describes a model to support the parent-infant relationship in the form of training in infant mental health offered by a non-profit, Supporting Child Caregivers (SCC) to nurses and other health workers. In addition to the training, an SCC team is exploring the development of 'nudges', strategies to encourage the sustainability of the training. In working with institutionalised children, Monisha Nayar-Akhtar describes problems that are encountered in the care of the children and proposes alternative ways of viewing the care and management of these children. Drawing from cultural and social theorists, these ideas while acknowledging the insights provided by attachment theory, offer socio and culturally informed ideas that broaden our understanding of working with institutionalised children in the South Asian regions of the world.
Infant Mental Health Journal, 1998
This article takes the basic ideas on the process of changing implicit knowledge put forward in t... more This article takes the basic ideas on the process of changing implicit knowledge put forward in this special issue, and extends them beyond psychotherapy to include other therapeutic relationships that occur in medicine. One vignette, from an encounter between a medical student and a dying patient, illustrates how a "moment of meeting" changes the student as well as the patient. The second shows how therapeutic interventions for new mothers with their newborn infants involve "moments of meeting" that alter the mother's implicit knowledge of her baby and of herself as a mother.
Infant Mental Health Journal, 2012
This article considers the influence of infant research on psychodynamic theory and practice. Inf... more This article considers the influence of infant research on psychodynamic theory and practice. Infant research highlights the dramatic effects of the early caregiving relationship on development throughout the life span. It also provides important perspectives on psychotherapeutic processes. This article highlights such elements as empathy, mutual recognition and attachment, along with elaborating the intersubjective and transactional systems perspectives. In addition, it stresses the powerful role of nonverbal, implicit communication and meaning-making, which play a greater role in human relational experience-and therefore in the therapeutic process-than previously understood. In addition to clarifying these general orientations, the article describes specific therapeutic strategies based on the expanded developmental knowledge.
Infant Mental Health Journal, 1998
The mechanisms that bring about change in psychotherapy are incompletely understood, at best. In ... more The mechanisms that bring about change in psychotherapy are incompletely understood, at best. In exploring processes of change, our working group has considered that the developing
Frontiers in Psychology, 2022
This manuscript explores intersubjectivity through a conceptual construct for meaning-making that... more This manuscript explores intersubjectivity through a conceptual construct for meaning-making that emphasizes three major interrelated elements–meaning making in interaction, making meaning with the body as well as the mind, and meaning making within an open dynamic system. These three elements are present in the literature on intersubjectivity with a wide range of terms used to describe various theoretical formulations. One objective of this manuscript is to illustrate how such a construct can be useful to understand the meaning-making observed in psychoanalysis, such as in the treatment of a young child on the autistic spectrum. The challenges in establishing an intersubjective state with a child on the autistic spectrum serve to highlight important features of intersubjectivity. As an important background to this clinical illustration, we illustrate the construct with the scientific paradigm of the well-known face-to-face still-face.
Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 1982
Children's religious ideas pro vide a source of projective material that can be relevant clinical... more Children's religious ideas pro vide a source of projective material that can be relevant clinically in a child's psychiatric evaluation. Areas that are sometimes revealed include (1) information about the child's parental introjects; (2) level of superego formation; (3) level of defense formation; (4) areas that are most anxiety provoking for the child. This religious material is frequently ignored, but can be a particularly useful adjunct when the usual child-evaluative techniques do not reveal a complete picture.
Infant Mental Health Journal, 1998
It is increasingly apparent that "something more" than interpretation is needed to bring about ch... more It is increasingly apparent that "something more" than interpretation is needed to bring about change in psychoanalytic treatment. Drawing on clinical and developmental observations, we propose that interactional processes from birth onward give rise to a form of procedural knowledge regarding how to do things with intimate others, knowledge we call implicit relational knowing. This knowing is distinct from conscious verbalizable knowledge and from the dynamic unconscious. The implicit relational knowing of patient and therapist intersect to create an intersubjective field that includes reasonably accurate sensings of each person's ways of being with others, sensings we call the "real relationship." This intersubjective field becomes more complex and articulated with repeated patient-therapist encounters, giving rise to emergent new possibilities for more coherent and adaptive forms of interaction. During a transactional event that we term a "moment of meeting," a new dyadic possibility crystallizes when the two persons achieve the dual goals of complementary fitted actions and joint intersubjective recognition in a new form. We argue that such moments of meeting shift the relational anticipations of each partner and allow for new forms of agency and shared experience to be expressed and elaborated.
Infant Mental Health Journal, 1998
The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1999
It is by now generally accepted that something more than interpretation is necessary to bring abo... more It is by now generally accepted that something more than interpretation is necessary to bring about therapeutic change. Using an approach based on recent studies of mother-infant interaction and non-linear dynamic systems and their relation to theories of mind, the authors propose that the something more resides in interactional intersubjective process that give rise to what they will call 'implicit relational knowing'. This relational procedural domain is intrapsychically distinct from the symbolic domain. In the analytic relationship it comprises intersubjective moments occurring between patient and analyst that can create new organisations in, or reorganise not only the relationship between the interactants, but more importantly the patient's implicit procedural knowledge, his ways of being with others. The distinct qualities and consequences of these moments (now moments, 'moments of meeting') are modelled and discussed in terms of a sequencing process that they call moving along. Conceptions of the shared implicit relationship, transference and countertransference are discussed within the parameters of this perspective, which is distinguished from other relational theories and self-psychology. In sum, powerful therapeutic action occurs within implicit relational knowledge. They propose that much of what is observed to be lasting therapeutic effect results from such changes in this intersubjective relational domain.
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 2011
This paper discusses a contribution of developmental theory to the psychoanalytic concept of “the... more This paper discusses a contribution of developmental theory to the psychoanalytic concept of “the talking cure.” The developmental theory presented is the dyadic expansion of consciousness model (Tronick 2007), a model consistent with the principles of nonlinear systems theory. The concept of “polysemic bundles” as a way of understanding the multiple simultaneous meaning-making processes occurring in dyadic communication is introduced. The theoretical discussion—focused primarily on the analysis of children—is illustrated with descriptions of videotaped sequences from the first session in the analysis of a five–year-old boy. The relevance of these insights to the analytic treatment of adults is then considered.
The International …, 2002
Uploads
Abstract of Papers; March 2018 Issue by Alexandra Harrison
Abstract of Papers; September 2019 Issue by Alexandra Harrison
prevalence of 10 adverse childhood experiences of child caregivers, using survey results for teachers as a control group. This comparison indicates that caregivers in South India have more ‘ghosts’ from their own childhood that are likely to adversely affect their caregiving. This situation suggests
the need to develop compensatory actions to help the child caregivers – some of which are identified in this article – so that the children in their care will experience ‘angels’ during their childhood that will promote their emotional growth and their own future parenting.
Papers by Alexandra Harrison
prevalence of 10 adverse childhood experiences of child caregivers, using survey results for teachers as a control group. This comparison indicates that caregivers in South India have more ‘ghosts’ from their own childhood that are likely to adversely affect their caregiving. This situation suggests
the need to develop compensatory actions to help the child caregivers – some of which are identified in this article – so that the children in their care will experience ‘angels’ during their childhood that will promote their emotional growth and their own future parenting.