(2005). International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 86:600-603 Review by: Marisa Muñoz Mariela Michelena has written a book about the first year in the life of a human being. It is a book of neither psychoanalytic theory nor clinical practice, although it is written from both clinical experience and the author's theoretical convictions. It is a work written by a woman psychoanalyst who contemplates with fascinated eyes the complex emotional world of a mother and her baby. The author proposes empathetically to accompany the mother, so that she too may have the possibility of accessing the richness and profundity of that psychoanalytic gaze. Michelena also proposes that this might help the mother understand herself and her baby in the prolonged process of psychic growth that makes the first year ‘a year for the rest of life’. Nor does this reviewer think this could be considered to be a book of popularised psychoanalysis, in any case a confusing and even pejorative term. Rather, it takes as its starting point the conviction (which other psychoanalyst [This is a summary or excerpt from the full text of the book or article. The full text of the document is available to subscribers.] |
