Engaging Primitive Anxieties of the Emerging Self: The Legacy of Frances Tustin

by Howard B. Levine (Editor), David G. Power (Editor)

Frances Tustin was a pioneering child psychotherapist who broke new ground in working with autistic children in the latter half of the twentieth century. This book amplifies and extends contributions by Tustin to the study and treatment of autism, autistic spectrum disorders and autistic defences and enclaves in non-autistic patients. It offers readers a contribution to the understanding and treatment of primitive mental states and primitive character disorders.

320 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 15, 2017

Reviews

[Harry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the paperback edition. These series of brilliantly written and conceived chapters opened my eyes and senses to what might be happening when the emerging self is left without a holding environment and survival terror ensues. How do these events (or non-events) shape the rest of our lives? Understanding our earliest experience remains elusive. There are no words, no memories to draw on - how do we reach back, touch into these formless memories enough to create something new, some foundation that can be built upon? Are there alternatives to the fatalism of biologic medicine, to purely behavioral interventions? This book is written for therapists as it draws on the work of Winnicott, Bion and Tustin - if you are a therapist you will probably gain some insights on how to add an awareness or primitive, annihilatory anxieties which will begin to inform your work. Perhaps this will happen only on a subtle level; for me some of the chapters helped make sense of the most challenging behaviors and adaptations. For me, as well, this book is testimony that psychoanalysis is very much a universal endeavor: there are chapters here from writers from the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Italy, Israel, Germany and the U.K.