Campbell Paul

Understanding the Sexuality of Infants Within Caregiving Relationships in the First Year

Infants’ innate joyful sexuality in the 1st year, as well as parental sexuality, are relatively neglected in models of clinical work with infants. We offer a developmental perspective that pays close attention to the body of the infant, in contrast to some psychoanalytic theories that view infantile sexuality as phantasy. With greater awareness of the infant’s body as sexual, therapists could develop a more resonant countertransference and become more aware of the experiences of the infant as subject. Some symptomatic difficulties are described, and the relevance for psychotherapeutic intervention with adults is indicated.

Stability within the Chaos: The Koori Kids Mental Health Network

Introduction: The Koori (Aboriginal term for Indigenous people from South Eastern Australia) Kids Mental Health Network is a child, adolescent and family psychiatric service based at the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service, a community health service which is controlled by the Victorian Koori community and based in Melbourne. The Koori Kids Mental Health Network is a collaborating group of Indigenous mental health workers from the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service and other health services together with a network of non-Indigenous workers from mainstream child and adolescent mental health services. Method: This article is a distillation of a 3-hour workshop involving seven members of the Koori Kids Mental Health Network. It comprised an introduction regarding the development of the Network, a section on the process by which Indigenous and mainstream workers have developed their working relationships and fostered each others development according to the needs of Indigenous families, and a section on the nature of the service provided to these patients. Results: A child and adolescent psychiatric service, relevant to the needs of the Victorian Aboriginal community, has developed through the collaborative functioning of mainstream and aboriginal mental health workers. It has been critical for the development of such a service that it be coordinated by an Aboriginal mental health worker and located within a health service administered by the Aboriginal community. The workshop enabled presentation and discussion of material leading to an understanding of the Service and its development.

Out of the Night Kitchen and Into Clinical Practice: Response to Commentaries

In reply to the commentaries by Susan C. Vaughan, Teresa Russo, and Dimitra Bekos on “Understanding the Sexuality of Infants” we concur with Vaughan’s noting, in her playfully creative response, a relative absence from the psychoanalytic literature of sexuality, even now, of the bodily realities of infants and parents in the 1st year of life. Teresa Russo and Dimitra Bekos in exploring the relevance of our paper for the work of an infant therapist challenge us to think further why the bodily sexuality of infants is also relatively absent in accounts of infant observation, and in clinical work, both in a transference/countertransference dimension and in descriptions of technique.

The baby's place in the world

Donald Winnicott has stated that the “inner world of the mother is the external world of the baby.” One of the goals of the 2004 WAIMH Congress held in Melbourne was to explore the nature of the many worlds that the infant experiences. The papers in this special issue of the Infant Mental Health Journal represent the plenary presentations at the Congress; each paper explores critical dimensions of the infant’s developing world. The Congress was characterized by a high level of collaboration and commitment to exploring the needs of infants and their families across many cultural and social contexts in many different countries and communities in the world. The world of the infant clearly extends beyond the important relationship between herself and her mother. James McHale reflects upon the difficulties that many infant mental health specialists working with very young children have in adequately describing and intervening with family members beyond the mother/infant dyad. He describes his research, and that of others, that demonstrates a stability in the way a parental couple goes about the process of parenting their child. Using this elegant research, which has real implications for the way we intervene with infants and families, he reflects that it is only recently—particularly since the work of Mrazek 1985 —that the family systems view has entered the consciousness of many of those working with infants and families. Why has it been so hard, he asks? In attempting to answer some of these questions, McHale stresses the importance of co-parenting; the mother and father as the parenting unit, as described in his own work and that of Elizabeth Fivaz-Depeursinge. McHale describes four durable patterns of family alliance which have their origins during the first few postnatal months. He demonstrates how important it is to have men involved, given their capacity as a potential therapeutic resource. He asserts that fathers must be involved as part of the couple, not simply just “being there” in the therapeutic process, but actively engaged in the therapeutic process. This research emphasizes how we