Live Company: Psychoanalytic Therapy With Autistic, Abused and Borderline Psychotic Children (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Tamina fails. She ends up on an island full of sensual children who have no memory and no past..." (more)
Key Phrases: obsessional reparation, manic position, times weekly treatment, Melanie Klein, Anna Freud, Tavistock Clinic (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

...exciting and challenging book... there is much to learn from this book for clinical practice and I recommend it wholeheartedly. - Midland Journal of Psychotherapy

...for anyone also working with distressed, depressed, depleted, or psychically arrested adult patients, the relevance and inspiration of this book will be immediately apparent. - British Journal of Psychotherapy

...painful, yet positive text... I hope that many readers will take their time over the reading of it: their patience will be well rewarded. - Nursing Times

A beautifully written, carefully documented exposition of thirty years intensive psychoanalytic work... a book which child and adult psychoanalysts will treasure. - The Journal of Child Psychotherapy

I cannot imagine a psychoanalytic psychotherapist who will not enjoy and value it. It has led me to some changes in the way I work, and it has explained some of the ways I had found I was working. - Anne Henry, Journal of the British Association of Psychotherapists

I think this is a deeply moving and wise book in a realm where it is so difficult to be sure of anything. - Oliver Sacks

Product Description

Anne Alverez integrates modern psychoanalytic theory with new findings in infant development and infant psychiatry to shed new light on ways of understanding autistic, psychotic and severely disturbed children and adolescents.

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (August 14, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415060974
• ISBN-13: 978-0415060974
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #584,449 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars inspiring creative book on child psychotherapy, May 22, 1999

By	[e-mail] "elsafirst" (New York City) - See all my reviews

this book is not about autism but about being human as a therapist and the humanity of very disturbed children..it is about how the author learned over time that the kind of psychoanalytic therapy she had originally tried with an autistic boy was not helpful - and how what she learned from that changed her ways of working with all sorts of disturbed children. Alvarez is a remarkably creative and honest clinican and a wonderful writer.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I am autistic, March 30, 2004

By A Customer

This book is about the bravest modern work on the subject I have seen. It takes real courage to stand up against the organized scorn of angry mothers of autistic children. Those women will want to kill you if you suggest that autism might be triggered by mistakes in child rearing, and might therefore be curable--or at least alleviated--through psychotherapy. Like it or not, this is what Alvarez is implying. Some reviewers think Temple Grandin is Brave??? What a joke.

4 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars If you want to know what autism is like - don't read this!, September 29, 1997

By A Customer

One study of different methods of treatment and education for children with autism established that they did worse in psychoanalysis than in any other form of treatment. High-functioning people with autism are usually provoked to laughter or fury by reading psychoanalytic "interpretations" of their behaviour. Anyone genuinely interested in understanding autism should read one of the excellent first-person accounts written by brave and brilliant individuals such as Temple Grandin.