Lecture (LE)
Objectives
The course aims to introduce the student to the main theoretical paradigms in developmental psychology, illustrating their characteristics in light of the clinical intervention aimed at children.
Syllabus
The first part of the course will be dedicated to outlining the theoretical-conceptual steps that made the clinical encounter with the “real child” possible, both in reference to its manifest behavioral and interactional dynamics and in its intrapsychic dimension.
In the second part of the course, a specific in-depth study will be carried out on clinical intervention in childhood trauma, with the introduction of diagnostic methodologies and evaluation tools. In this way, students will acquire theoretical elements of the technique of clinical intervention with traumatized children.
Teaching: Classroom lessons, presentations and case discussions.
Part I
- Introduction: the relational nature of development.
- The psychoanalysis of children: the centrality of “relational objects” in clinical intervention.
- The mother-child relationship and the intergenerational transmission of psychopathology.
- Attachment theory and psychopathology.
- Infant Research and therapeutic work.
Part II
- Introduction: psychic trauma.
- PTSD and beyond: diagnostic aspects in childhood trauma.
- Post traumatic evolutionary adaptation.
- Psychic trauma and attachment: methodology, diagnostic tools and principles of psychotherapeutic intervention.
Exam
Oral exam
Bibliography
- Berthelot, N., Ensink, K., Bernazzani, O., Normandin, L., Luyten, P. and Fonagy, P. (2015), Intergenerational transmission of attachment in abused and neglected mothers: the role of trauma-specific reflective functioning. Infant Mental Health Journal, 36, 200–212.
- Fraiberg S., Adelson E., Shapiro V. (1975). Ghosts in the nursery: A psychoanalytic approach to the problems of impaired infant-mother relationships. Journal of the American Academy of Child & adolescent Psychiatry, 14, 387–421.
- Nicolais G. (2015), Metodologie valutative nell’abuso e nella trascuratezza: per una diagnosi non solipsistica. Infanzia e Adolescenza, 14(1), 45-60.
- Speranza A.M., Nicolais G., Maggiora Vergano C., Dazzi N. (2017), Emerging criteria for the low-coherence cannot classify category. Attachment & Human Development, 19(6), 1-22.
- Tambelli R., Psicologia clinica dell’età evolutiva. Bologna, Il Mulino, 2012.
