Children’s Minds in the Line of Fire Blog


Intra-psychic, yet societally induced trauma is relevant to the ‘Mind in the Line of Fire’ theme chosen for our 53rd Congress in Cartagena, in 2023. Our IPA leaders (President Harriet Wolfe and Vice-President Adriana Prengler) have recognized that the pandemic exaggerated societal inequities long with us; they urge us to develop psychoanalytic theory relevant to societal effects on psyches. Children and adolescents are often the group most affected by cultural changes and catastrophes. They are like the canaries sent into coal mines to signal the presence of gases, imbibing cultural, societal and economic changes in a rapid and powerful way. In advance of the congress, COCAP (IPA Committee on Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis) here initiates a blog entitled, ‘Children’s Minds in the Line of Fire.’

Dr. Mary T. Brady, COCAP Co-Chair
IPA Committee on Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis

There's a hole in daddy's arm

Thursday 17 August 2023

Ben Fife writes "If we as an analytic community, with what we know about the impacts of loss, cannot be present and attempt to help those in need understand these experiences, we risk becoming one more absent object in a time of need."

Adolescent Suicide

Wednesday 26 July 2023

The suicidal act exposes us to the mystery of life and death, of origin and end.It also sensitizes us to our limits in the face of the incomprehensible.

Childism and Beyond

Tuesday 20 June 2023

Jennifer Davids writes we cannot consider the minds of children without considering the interplay with the minds of their parents or carers, along with the multi-directional systemic influences of wider social forces.

Considerations of the familial and the social in the formation of childhood subjectivity

Tuesday 06 June 2023

Michael O’Loughlin asks if we can imagine pedagogical systems or a therapeutic milieu that would enable children to begin to give an account of themselves, in ways that would allow them to begin to deconstruct the systems of recognizability embedded

The use of technology in the observation of the parent-infant relationship, Bick method, in the SARS

Tuesday 06 June 2023

Dr Ester Malque Latvian writes the use of technology was inevitable during the COVID lockdown, as it was the only way to give continuity to the observation of the parent-infant relationship. Like so many aspects of clinical work during the pandemic,

Weaving and Unweaving Webs of Gender

Tuesday 21 February 2023

Kristin Fiorella examines the way gender exploration can focus and expose ontological anxieties.

Medically Assisted Procreation and Mothering Alone During the Pandemic

Wednesday 04 January 2023

Katy Bogliatto writes on medically assisted procreation and mothering alone during the pandemic.

Bringing Alpha Function to Children in the Storm of Family Violence

Tuesday 18 October 2022

Psychoanalyst Kimberly Leary enjoins us to reach out to communities we want to join; don’t wait to be asked.

About Adolescent Suicide

Monday 26 September 2022

María del Carmen Míguez asks "what changes are we witnessing regarding the physical and mental integrity of adolescents?"

Lies about Chernobyl in 1986 and about the war in Ukraine 2022

Tuesday 30 August 2022

Antònia Grimalt considers the emotional toxicity of ongoing lies and malignant manipulation of the truth.