Forthcoming Weekend Webinars
Welcome to our exciting series of online weekend webinars delivered by major figures in the world of infant mental health. Here you will find details of webinars coming up over the next few months. Go to the archive for details of past webinars.
Click on the Contact Us button or email us to ask for more information or to make a booking.
Strangers as Kin
Prophecy Coles
May 7th 2022
10.30am-12.00pm
A Zoom link will be sent in advance of the day.
£35
In this webinar Prophecy Coles will illustrate themes from her book Strangers as Kin, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Illegitimacy, Adoption and Reproductive Technology, published in 2021.
Prophecy’s talk will begin with the unwanted child in myth and literature, before tracing the rise in illegitimate births after the First World War and society’s response. This included allowing the adoption of illegitimate children, but in about 20% cases there are distressing consequences for the birth mother or the adopted child. Prophecy will illustrate this with a mother forced to give up her child and an adopted child’s search to find its birth mother.
Some potential difficulties for the illegitimate child will be discussed. This will include the insights of Hermine Hug-Hellmuth (18781-1924),who was the first Viennese child psychotherapist and the first psychoanalyst to write about these issues.
Legislation now allows parents to trace their adopted child and adopted children to know the name of their biological mother. Today it is almost impossible to adopt a baby at birth in the UK, but there are many older ‘hard to place’ children who are in desperate need of the love of a new family. These children are often very distressed by their earlier experiences. Prophecy will dscuss the work of Family Futures, which helps adopting parents and their ‘hard to place’ children to find a way of living together.
The talk will be of interest to those who have been affected by illegitimacy and adoption whether personally or through their work.
Prophecy Coles is a retired adult psychotherapist, who trained at the Lincoln Institute for Psychotherapy and was then a member and training therapist of the London Centre for Psychotherapy. She has written several books about those on the margin of concern within the psychotherapy world. These include The Importance of Sibling Relationships in Psychoanalysis. (2003), The Uninvited Guest from the Unremembered Past (2011), The Shadow of the Second Mother (2015) and Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Stepparents and Stepparenting (2018).
For more information or to book a place, please email [email protected]
Theatre of the Mouth
Jeanne Magagna
April 2nd 2022
10.30am-12.00pm
A Zoom link will be sent in advance of the day.
£35
Observing infants in their families is a crucial asset for any parent or professional relating to children. The mental health of babies could be vastly improved if we helped people understand non-verbal communications of the infant and the infantile self in children and adults.
This webinar will address one aspect of communication by infants and young people, the Theatre of the Mouth. Attunement and misattunement between parent and infant, as well as between therapist and child, will be considered. Using infant observation and clinical work, Jeanne will focus on therapeutic styles which facilitate or hinder therapeutic alliances with the infant and child.
Dr Jeanne Magagna helps people to observe the deeper aspects of infants' personality in order that infants can be better understood and can receive good parenting. Alongside jointly edited books – Universals in Psychoanalysis and Crises in Adolescence – she has edited: Intimate Transformations, The Silent Child, Creativity and Psychotic States, A Psychotherapeutic Understanding of Children and Young People with Eating Disorders.
Jeanne has been Head of Psychotherapy Services at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and has taught for many years at the Tavistock Clinic in London and internationally (for example, on suicide, self-harm, anorexia, infant observation, child psychotherapy).
Jeanne can be seen talking about infant observation in this legacy interview on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW5ZimGFB_o
For more information or to book a place, please email [email protected]
This is one of several online activities offered by the Parent Infant Centre and School of Infant Mental Health. Please visit www.infantmentalhealth.com for more details.
Places are sometimes limited and are subject to demand and availability.
Please contact the School for more information.