We all know the tender and sometimes fraught dance between parent and child that shapes the family relationship as well as each individual within it. When each person’s hopes align with the other’s there is great opportunity for developmental leaps in the child and great satisfaction for the parent. When dreads are in the foreground, or when trauma intervenes, everyone suffers. Imagine the emotional and psychological strain on a mother and her son when the attack on the World Trade Center claimed the life of husband and father.
In the upcoming TRISP workshop – Applying Kohut’s Major Contributions to the Treatment of Parents and Children – I will present a case in which this uncommon tragedy profoundly thwarted the essential experiences of idealization, mirroring and twinship for both mother and son. In exploring Geist’s (2008) notion of “connectedness – the feeling of being a felt presence in another’s life” I will demonstrate how the tie to me enabled mother and son to re-establish the tie to each other, a tie that was fractured with the traumatic death of the father.
To kick off the discussion, Karen Roser will augment Kohut’s developmental theory with an elaboration of the intersubjective aspects of understanding and working with parents and children. With this lens added, we will see how parents and child co-create a mutually expansive and influential system.
Using examples from everyday life as well as the clinical consulting room, we will explore together the complexities of working within a system. In addition, we will look at how working this way also connects to a new way of understanding our adult patients’ developmental histories. There will be plenty of opportunities for discussion, so please come and add your ears and voices.
Posted by Joanna Hulton
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