The Psychoanalyst and the Child

This is the clearest and most complete account of clinical and theoretical child psychoanalysis that I have ever read. Michel Ody, a very experienced child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, who has grappled throughout his long career with a large range of situations with children and parents in a public sector district practice , shows us with great independence of mind how it is possible to refer to psychoanalytic practice and theory without copying or imitating. -Gerard Lucas, psychiatre des Hopitaux , Former Child Psychiatry consultant, Paris Centre Alfred Binet, France This book is crucial for all colleagues dealing with children. This is a challenging book, as the author confronts us with different clinical situations but also with his theoretical developments deeply rooted in Freudian metapsychology. The book explores the nature of psychoanalytic work with a child from a basic consultation to psychoanalytical treatment. What is original and new is the way Michel Ody shows the continuity of this adventure. He relates his experience of 35 years as a child psychiatric consultant and a psychoanalyst directing a team in the public French health system. Ody shows us complex clinical situations and the way he thinks both clinically but always referring to theories. He looks at the common features between the therapeutic consultation - a consultation that will become therapeutic - and the analytic treatment studying the levels of interventions and interpretations and their aim as their metapsychological articulation. -Marilia Aisenstein, Training Analyst of the Hellenic Psychoanalytical Society; former president, Paris Society