Training and primary prevention: Clinical experience with infants and their families as an obligatory part of the child psychiatrist's training

Abstract

This article reports on a clinical program that has been an obligatory part of the training of child psychiatrists since 1976. It consists of following infant and parent development through the first postnatal year. Although the families who volunteer to participate are not selected on the basis of identified problems or risks, intervention was indicated on several occasions. This training experience has been highly valued by child psychiatrists. It also performed functions of primary prevention. It is suggested that if such training programs were established at other institutions and in other clinical fields, the primary prevention of emotional disorders would significantly be promoted.

The replacement of the fantasied oedipal child: A disruptive effect of sibling loss on the mother-infant relationship.

“…A case is presented in which a woman who had lost a sibling during adolescence experienced her own child, almost two decades later, as a replacement for the lost sibling. The case was followed in a program which is designed for the longitudinal following of volunteer families from the third trimester of pregnancy (Solyom & Greenman, 1980). The clinical material was obtained through (a) semistructured prenatal and postnatal individual and conjoint interviews with the parents; (b) naturalistic observa-that the replacement child, in turn, acts as a barrier to parental acknowlec.gement of death, because a real child exists as a substitute.…”