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Echoes of Childhood: The Foundational Role of Child Analysis in Adult Analytic Work

Editor: Caroline M. Sehon

Price range: £21.59 through £33.99

Echoes of Childhood reveals how the wisdom of child analysis revitalizes work with adults. It gathers an international group of distinguished psychoanalysts who demonstrate the relevance of developmental perspectives for clinical practice by illustrating the enduring influence of early life on personality, relationships, and therapeutic change.

Due to be published January 2026

Editor

Caroline M. Sehon
ISBN

9781800134416
Format

Paperback, e-Book, Print & e-Book
Page Extent

288
Publication Date

January 2026
Subject Areas

Psychoanalysis
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Description

Echoes of Childhood: The Foundational Role of Child Analysis in Adult Analytic Work explores how techniques developed in child psychoanalysis open new depth and flexibility in the treatment of adults. Far from being a specialized niche, child analytic work reveals the earliest layers of psychic life. It offers tools that sharpen listening, expand tolerance of intense affect, and illuminate the hidden child within every patient. Editor Caroline Sehon brings together leading figures Ana Maria Barroso, Mary T. Brady, Talia Hatzor, Theodore Jacobs, Jeanne Magagna, Rex McGehee, Jack Novick, Kerry Kelly Novick, Daniel W. Prezant, Justine Kalas Reeves, Jill Savege Scharff, David E. Scharff, and Virginia Ungar to add their groundbreaking and engaging contributions on this vital component for adult analysis to her own. Drawing on richly detailed child cases, each chapter is followed by expert commentary, creating a dialogue that bridges the worlds of child and adult analysis. The reader is guided through clinical encounters that highlight how attention to play, gesture, nonverbal communication, and the management of overwhelming feelings – skills honed in child work – translate directly into more effective adult treatment.

Organized in developmental sequence, the book traces psychic life from infancy through childhood and adolescence into adulthood. Along the way, contributors show how early trauma, attachment, and the internalization of parental figures reverberate across the life span, and how psychoanalysis informed by child work can help transform these dynamics. Echoes of Childhood demonstrates that there is one psychoanalytic process manifesting across different stages of life.

This must-read book is of particular value to graduate psychotherapists, analysts-in-training, and candidates in integrated child analytic programs, while also serving as a rich resource for practicing child and adult analysts seeking to deepen their clinical repertoire. More broadly, it will engage mental health professionals and all readers interested in how childhood experience continues to shape the adult mind.

 

About the editor

About the editor

Caroline M. Sehon, MD, FABP, is a supervising child and adult analyst and clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University. She serves as executive director of the International Psychotherapy Institute (IPI) and is past chair of the International Institute for Psychoanalytic Training at IPI. At the American Psychoanalytic Association, Dr. Sehon serves as secretary and chairs the Psychoanalysis in the Community Committee and the discussion group “Enriching Adult Analytic Work by Child Analytic Training and Practice.” She serves on the editorial boards for the journals Couple and Family Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in China. Dr. Sehon has published on child and adult psychoanalysis and teleanalysis. She practices child and adult psychoanalysis, and couple and family therapy in Bethesda, Maryland. She received the 2025 IPA Community and the World Award (Second Prize, Psychoanalytic Assistance in Emergencies and Crises).

Contents

Contents

Table of Contents

List of illustrations
Permissions
About the editor and contributors
Editor’s note and acknowledgments

Part I: Early childhood

  1. What child patients teach us about analytic technique
    Caroline M. Sehon (USA)
  2. Play, containment, and insights from child analysis
    Caroline M. Sehon (USA) with integrated commentary from Jill Savege Scharff (USA)
  3. Transference–countertransference, nonverbal communication, and interpretation in child analysis: Its relevance for adult analysis
    Virginia Ungar (Argentina) with integrated commentary from Jill Savege Scharff (USA)
  4. Learning from a hemophiliac boy
    Jill Savege Scharff (USA)

Commentary
Caroline M. Sehon (USA)

Part II: Middle childhood

  1. Concurrent analytic work with an out-of-control child and his parents
    Justine Kalas Reeves (USA)

Commentaries
Mary T. Brady (USA)
David E. Scharff (USA)

  1. Navigating infantile anxieties in a traumatized child and family
    Ana Maria Barroso (Mexico)

Commentaries
Talia Hatzor (USA)
Daniel W. Prezant (USA)

  1. Analytic treatment of an obsessional ten-year-old girl
    David E. Scharff (USA)

Commentaries
Theodore J. Jacobs (USA)
Rex McGehee (USA)

Part III: Adolescence

  1. Countertransference in child analytic work: Piecing together a fractured mind
    Caroline M. Sehon (USA) with commentary from Jill Savege Scharff (USA)
  1. A two-systems treatment of a late adolescent
    Kerry Kelly Novick (USA)

Commentary
Jack Novick (USA)

Part IV: Adulthood

Introduction to Chapter 10: The experience of infant observation and its relevance to adult analysis
Jeanne Magagna (UK)

  1. Tentacles of the past: A dream of archaic dependency
    Caroline M. Sehon (USA)

Commentaries
Jeanne Magagna (UK)
Daniel W. Prezant (USA)

  1. Refinding the ghosts in the nursery: The value of child analysis for adult psychoanalytic treatment
    Caroline M. Sehon (USA) with integrated commentary from Jill Savege Scharff (USA)

Index

 

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