Ghosts in the Nursery Flashcards
What is the premise behind the Article Ghosts in the nursery?
Fraiberg introduces the metaphor “ghosts in the nursery” to describe the ways in which parents, by reenacting with their small children scenes from the parents’ own unremembered early relational experiences of helplessness and fear, transmit child maltreatment from one generation to the next. There are different groups of parents, some who acknowledge the ghosts and form a strong alliance with a therapist to banish them and another group who seem possessed by the ghosts and the therapist rather than the ghost is seen as the intruder. The article explores two case studies that lead to a conclusion about what sets the two groups apart and therapeutic approach that has laid the groundwork for Infant Mental Health.
Who wrote Ghosts in the Nursery and when?
Selma Fraiburg, 1974
What leads some families to resist banishing ghosts from the nursery?
Parents who can access BOTH the experience of being parented and the painful affect that accompanied those experiences tended to want to make sure that their child is never treated the way they were. The parent’s who could recall the details of the experience but who had repressed the painful emotions tended to “identify with the aggressor” and therefore repeat the behaviors.
What therapeutic strategy did the therapists in the article use to support the parent child relationship?
The therapist revived the the childhood affects in the safety of the therapeutic relationship, the parent could no longer harm the child.
Who wrote Angels in the Nursery and when?
ALICIA F. LIEBERMAN, 2005
What is the premise behind the article Angels in the nursery?
Angels in the nursery—care-receiving experiences characterized by intense shared affect between parent and child in which the child feels nearly
perfectly understood, accepted, and loved— provide the child with a core sense of security and self-worth
that can be drawn upon when the child becomes a parent to interrupt the cycle of maltreatment.
