Repairing Links

Building Attachments In The Preschool Classroom

Bibliographic Data

ID8333376
AuthorsLynn Keller (San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, corresponding author), L Eileen Keller (San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis)
Year2011
Volume59
Issue4
Pages737-763
Publication date2011-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0651 • E-ISSN: 1941-2460
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0003065111417624
PMID21832121
OpenAlexW2148230268
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited13

A psychoanalytic model of preschool consultation is presented, born of the conviction that psychoanalysis has powerful tools with which to tackle some of our most difficult and entrenched community problems. Since trauma is known to impact our ability to think reflectively and symbolically (Fonagy, Moran, and Target 1993), the clinical methods of psychoanalysis—drawing on the ideas of container/contained, the capacity to hold alternate points of view, and the capacity to reflect empathically (here with teachers in the face of their at times harsh and insensitive treatment of students)—are crucial to success in work with cumulatively traumatized staff (Khan 1963). The strongest resistances to consultation arise from an anti-attachment system developed as a result of cumulative trauma and operating at multiple levels in the preschool. Consultation services are organized around an understanding of this anti-attachment system. At various levels of the system, including staff, parents, and children, consultants work to facilitate secure relationships in the preschool setting. These relationships foster recognition of children’s emotional complexities and build cooperative links between staff and parents, in an atmosphere that otherwise might often push adults into fearful, self-protective states that interfere with their contact with children’s states of mind

Atmosphere (unit) · Container (type theory) · Conviction · Face (sociological concept) · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Psychotherapist · Sociology · Work (physics) · Child Therapy and Development · Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications

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