Overview

Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis in Times of Crisis: War, Pandemic and the Climate Crisis gathers a global cohort of psychoanalytic thinkers to consider the most pressing issues currently faced by young people worldwide. Each chapter provides a theoretical exploration of our psychically and socially damaging collective reality and offers practical support to psychoanalysts working to create safe spaces in a world that feels fundamentally unlivable for many young people. Case studies span the Ukraine and Palestine/Israel conflicts, the COVID-19 pandemic, the opioid crisis and forced displacement as a result of climate catastrophe. Contributors explore the active impact of these devastating events, including the pervasive hopelessness suffered by young people deprived of agency and a viable future, through first-hand accounts of working with children and adolescents in conflict zones. Drawing on the work of Bion, Winnicott, Judith Butler and others, these essays offer hope by showing the important role that psychoanalytic work can play in restoring the capacity for psychic development, resilience and meaning making. Part of the Routledge Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis series, this book is an essential read for all psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, caregivers, teachers, social workers and academics.

Full Product Details

Author:   Kristin Fiorella
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
ISBN:  

9781032835822

ISBN 10:   1032835826
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   12 December 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

Foreword Kristin Fiorella Part One: War Introduction Kristin Fiorella Chapter One: War, Trauma and the Survival of Hope in Palestine: What We Learn from its Children Samah Jabr and Elizabeth Berger Chapter Two: Pour a Libation for Us: Restoring the Sense of a Moral Universe to Children Affected by Violence Martha Bragin Chapter Three: Psychoanalytic Thoughts on Evacuated Parents and Children during the First Weeks of the October 7th War Ruth Weinberg Chapter Four: Minds in the Line of Fire: Mothers During the War Kateryna Abashkina, Kateryna Alpatova,Tetiana Stasiuk, Anastasya Svinarchuk, and Emanuela Quagliata Chapter Five: Children in a World at War Monica Cardenal Chapter Six: There’s a Hole in Daddy’s Arm: Making Contact with Opiod Epidemic in Clinical Practice Ben Fife Chapter Seven: Forbidden Games: Anti War Manifesto: Ana Belchior Melicias Chapter Eight: Totalitarian Regimes and a Child’s Mind: Cria Cuervos Mary Brady, Ana Belchior Melicias, Virginia Unger, and Adriana Prengler Chapter Nine: The Need for Truth in Healthy Psychic Development Antonia Grimalt Part Two: Pandemic Introduction Kristin Fiorella Chapter Ten: Other Lullabies: Attacks on Blackness, Confusion of Tongues, and the Loss of Play Carlos Padron Chapter Eleven: Caring for Cryptnids: Welcoming the More-Than-Human into Psychoanalytic Treatment Kathleen Del Mar Miller Chapter Twelve: Adolescents in the Line of Fire: Between Chaos, Ideals, and Psychic Reality Today in the Adolescent Subjectivation Process Fernando Gomez Chapter Thirteen: S.O.S. Brasil Alicia Beatriz Dorado de Lisondo Chapter Fourteen: On Psychic Envelopes and Spaces for Young Children during the Pandemic Christine Anzieu-Premmereur Part Three: Climate Change Introduction Kristin Fiorella Chapter Fifteen: Eco-Anxiety in Children and Young People- A Rational Response, Irreconciliable Despair, or Both? Caroline Hickman Chapter Sixteen:The Climate Crisis and the “Unnatural” Body: Onto-epistemological Possibilities and Threats of the Genders of Children and Adolescents Kristin Fiorella Chapter Seventeen: Climate Anxiety, Maturational Loss, and Adversarial Growth Panu Pihkala Chapter Eighteen: Dwelling and the Climate Crisis: A Developmental Perspective and its Implications Ryan Lamothe Chapter Nineteen: The Climate Crisis: The Impact of Fragile Identificatory Models on Adolescence Christine Franckx

Reviews

‘Written for tumultuous times, this volume offers fresh and valuable psychoanalytic reflections on traumatized children’s play and on how wars/climate change/pandemics inflect psychic development. Breaking with psychoanalysis’s omertà around naming the genocide of Palestinian children and trans youth, Fiorella’s bold and erudite collection tracks fantasies about blown-off limbs growing back, impending disablements by climate change/pandemics, and trans children’s anxieties about being erased. It also necessarily reveals how adults fail children, children wounded not only by bombs, disease, and rising temperatures, but also by adults’ lies, greed, narcissism, and inaction. Never has Winnicott’s “there’s no such thing as a baby” been such a searing indictment.’ Avgi Saketopoulou, Cypriot and Greek psychoanalyst on faculty at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, New York, USA. ‘This is a powerful and precious book. The contributors have gone undaunted into the darkest of places and seen some terrible sights. Someone had to do it and thanks to these brave psychoanalysts, now someone has. They have much to teach us.’ Anne Alvarez, Consultant, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist, London, UK. ‘It is an essential task for psychoanalysis to contemplate the precarity of human existence in a world under threat of extinction, a pandemic, and endless wars. The social-political circumstances of our lives are as fundamental to who we are as the dynamics of our families of origins, doubly so when they are traumatic. This book explores the condition of the most vulnerable humans: children. It is written by people who have been meeting them in some of the most devastating trauma zones. It is a gift, and a demand that we pay close attention and do what we can.’ Eyal Rozmarin, psychoanalyst, New York, USA.

Author Information

Kristin Fiorella, Psy.D., MFT, MFA, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in San Francisco. She is on the faculties of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California and the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis.

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