Joaquín Díaz Atienza
As those of you who know me are aware, my training in child psychiatry took place in Paris, France, where the theoretical training was psychoanalytic, although during rotations in different hospitals we had the option of working in departments with this orientation or others. In this sense, while my academic training was psychoanalytic, my practical experience was in services where the opposite approach was practiced: Robert Debré (Professor Dugas, Marie Claude Mouren Simeoni), Necker Enfants Malades (Professor Devray Ritzen), etc.
I believe this comprehensive training has been extremely useful to me in understanding the emotional and behavioral development of childhood by integrating knowledge from developmental biology – I have a doctorate in neuroscience – the learning paradigm, the environmental factors influencing genetic expression, and how, during the child's early interactions with the environment and parental figures, certain unconscious patterns are internalized with a significant impact on our behavioral and emotional expression.
These are the reasons why, in these posts, I intend to summarize the various psychodynamic theories that have been proposed to explain the genesis of emotional development in childhood and adolescence. Each post will cover the essential contributions of each author and how to expand upon them, which doesn't mean that we won't have to subdivide them in some cases, since one of the goals is to keep them from being too lengthy.
We will begin with Sigmund Freud, naturally. But we will also discuss Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, René Spitz, Donald W. Winnicott, Margaret S. Mahler, Wilfred R. Bion, Heinz Hartmann and the ego school, and, of course, a topic very dear to me: those authors who have investigated attachment, beginning with John Bowlby. Finally, we will briefly present some of Jacques-Marie Lacan's concepts.
Each author's presentation will have an associated specific forum that will be maintained or not depending on the participation of those interested.
I want to clarify that this is a series of posts related to the emotional development of any child or adolescent, without specifically focusing on psychopathology. This doesn't mean that some of them won't touch on certain psychopathological aspects.
SUMMARIZINGThis project is being carried out by a non-psychoanalyst who believes that psychoanalysis cannot be entirely excluded. There are fundamental aspects we must understand in order to understand children and adolescents. I hope you find it interesting.
You can read the second post here.
