Talking to Babies Healing with Words on a Maternity Ward

by SZEJER, MYRIAM

• ISBN13: 9780807021149
• ISBN10: 0807021148
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-08-15
• Publisher: Beacon Press

Summary

"Myriam Szejer talks to newborns. For over a decade she has worked in the maternity ward of a hospital outside Paris. Called in by hospital staff when a baby or its parents are suffering, Szejer uses the psychoanalytic techniques of careful listening mad talking to reach failure-to-thrive and other suffering newborns and reverse their conditions. Talking to Babies is the story of her important work." "Talking to Babies is the first book to show how the "talking cure" can help infants and their parents. Post-partum depression in mothers, failure-to-thrive in babies - these problems might be approached quite differently if maternity wards incorporated some of Szejer's practices. High-tech interventions are all too common in American maternity wards: Talking to Babies offers a more humane route for restoring health."--BOOK JACKET.

Author Biography

Myriam Szejer, M.D. is a child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and also president of the organization La Cause des Bébés (In the Interests of the Baby). She lives in Paris, France.

Table of Contents

Preface by René Frydman, M.D.	ix
Introduction: "We Hereby Announce..."	1	(15)
1. The Interests of the Baby	16	(29)
2. A Child Is Born at Least Twice	45	(36)
3. Speech, Language, and Memory in the Newborn	81	(38)
4. Doing Psychoanalysis on a Maternity Ward	119	(20)
5. From Birth to Life's Limbo: A Closer Look at the Baby Blues	139	(44)
6. Confidential Childbirth: The Child Given Up at Birth	183	(46)
Epilogue: The Choice to Live	229	(8)
Acknowledgments	237	(2)
Notes	239	(6)
Index	245