‘Paralysed associations’: Countertransference difficulties in recognising meaning in the treatment of children on the autistic spectrum.

Children with autism can have a paralysing effect on the clinician’s capacity to associate freely: connections that seem obvious on reflection may be impossible to notice in the child’s presence. The author argues that this situation can be reached by more than one pathway, and that the degree of the child’s bodily and emotional cohesion is an important factor. Children may seek to immobilise the therapist’s thought processes through projective identification, whether to communicate their own experience of paralysis or because these thought processes are equated with a parental intercourse that produces a ‘baby’ (as described by Bion and Britton). Vignettes are offered to illustrate how the therapist may be nudged into overlooking this baby as well as a potentially growing part of the child that is identified with it, with important consequences for development. A second possible pathway appears to involve the much more primitive mechanism of adhesive identification, in which the child’s sense of continuing existence depends on sticking to the therapist’s surface and any movement can lead to a sense of bodily disintegration. In the clinical illustration, the therapist felt physically constrained and unable to recognise links in the material: it is suggested that this was in resonance with the child’s fear that movement, whether physical or mental, meant losing parts of his body and must be avoided at all costs. These levels can mask each other, and it seems essential to attend to both in order to avoid impasse or the overlooking of essential aspects of the child’s experience

What about the transference? Technical issues in the treatment of children who cannot symbolize

Throughout the history of psychoanalysis, the question as to whether any given group of patients could benefit by it has centred on the nature of the transference that those patients developed and on the need for technical modifications. These debates have proved fruitful for theories of mental structure as well as for theories of technique. Child analysis was perhaps the most important early example of the widened scope of psychoanalysis, along with the treatment of psychotic patients. Work with children has of course itself been greatly extended in the past 30 years, so that the "normal neurotic" child hardly figures in our practice, certainly not in the public sector. Instead, we see traumatized, abused and refugee children, children in foster care, children on the oncology ward, psychotic or borderline children, or those with autism or with serious developmental delay and learning impairment. All these children tend to be overwhelmed by primitive anxieties concerning physical and psychic survival. Because of this, they resort to extreme measures to protect themselves, and they may experience a therapeutic approach as an additional threat. My aim in this chapter is to consider a number of technical issues that arise in work with children whose capacity for symbolization is impaired, for whatever reason. This impairment obviously affects their ability to play, as well as their capacity to speak and to make use of spoken interpretations. It also has important implications for the handling of the transference. The two groups of children with impaired symbolic capacity on whom I wish to focus are children on the autistic spectrum and children whose behaviour suggests borderline psychosis. I would like to highlight two main contrasts between these two groups, and to suggest that they have important implications for technique

Unravelling the Photoprotection Capacity of Resveratrol on Histidine Oxidation

Exposure to sun radiation causes great oxidative stress and activates a numerous of defense mechanisms in living systems, such as the synthesis of antioxidants. Resveratrol (RSV), a naturally occurring stilbene molecule, has antioxidant properties and is synthesized in large amounts when plants are under high oxidative stress. Likewise, under UV and visible radiation, biomolecules are oxidized, losing their physiological properties and, therefore, avoiding the harmful effects of solar radiation is crucial in order to preserve the functionality of cellular components. In proteins, one essential component that is often susceptible to degradation is the amino acid histidine (His), which can be modified via several oxidizing mechanisms. In this article, we evaluate the photoprotection capacity of RSV in photosensitized oxidation of His, which is initiated with a one-electron transfer reaction, yielding the His radical cation (His•+). The photoprotective properties of RSV are evaluated using kinetics analysis during steady-state irradiation and laser flash photolysis experiments. The experimental results reveal that the presence of RSV in the solution causes an evident decrease of the His consumption initial rates as a result of a reaction between His•+ and RSV that recovers the amino acid. In addition, we conclude that during its antioxidant action, RSV is consumed being a sacrificial antioxidant.Fil: Neyra Recky, Jael Rhode. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; ArgentinaFil: Dantola, Maria Laura. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; ArgentinaFil: Lorente, Carolina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas; Argentin

An Observationally and Psychoanalytically Informed Parent-Toddler Intervention for Young Children at Risk of ASD: An Audited Case Series and Convergences with Organicist Approaches

In this paper we describe, with illustrative vignettes, an observationally and psychoanalytically informed parent-toddler intervention for young children at risk of ASD. The intervention was offered to children between 18 and 24 months who fell in the High Risk category of the Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (CHAT), which carries an 83% chance of a diagnosis at the age of 3 ½. In the absence of pathways for children under 2, this preliminary case series comprised 8 children from a heterogeneous clinical population. A significantly lower proportion of treated children were later diagnosed than the CHAT would predict (p = 0.03, Fisher’s Exact Test), suggesting that this intervention merits further investigation with larger numbers of children and additional instruments. Scores on two routine outcome monitoring measures (the Goal Based Measure and the PIR-GAS) improved both in children who were later diagnosed and in those who were not. We consider these findings in relation to recent non-psychoanalytic research papers (including an RCT on a parent-mediated intervention) that demonstrate the prime importance of parent-toddler interactions, and we suggest that supporting parental confidence is essential to improvement. We discuss emerging convergences between psychoanalytic and organicist approaches, and the possible place of this intervention in conjunction with others