The Enigma of Childhood: The Profound Impact of the First Years of Life on Adults as Couples and Parents

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In this book Ronnie Solan traces the way that early psychic development from birth up to three years is reflected throughout our lifespan, including adulthood, couplehood and parenthood. The inner child reverberating within us (consciously and unconsciously) and thus present in our ongoing interactions with others, often colours and guides our current experiences, whether with our life partner or children, and as psychotherapists, with our patients. Our openness to its resonance allows us to become more attuned to and emotionally accessible to ourselves and others.

The author's primary aim is to familiarize the reader with her innovative idea of the emotional immune system managed by a healthy narcissism and operating via the inner reverberations of hidden childhood narratives. Our sense of familiar self is accordingly consolidated and immunised to an invasion by foreign sensations.

References to world literature, and clinical vignettes taken from the author s perceptive observations and dynamic treatments, are used to illustrate her theoretical innovations regarding healthy narcissism, her conceptualization of jointness as a key facet of object relations and of the art of couplehood, and her original and creative account of the ego's mechanisms of adaptation and defence.