Notes About the Xvii Symposium of Childhood and Adolescence of the Psychoanalytical Society

NOTES ABOUT THE XVII SYMPOSIUM OF CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE OF THE PSYCHOANALYTICAL SOCIETY OF PORTO ALEGRE and III MEETING ON BICK OBSERVATION METHOD

Creativity and symbolization: structuring functions in the baby, children and adolescents. This was the title of the symposium which took place on May, 21rst, 22nd and 23rd, 2015. Psychoanalyst NildeParadaFranch (Full Member of the Brazilian Psychoanalytic Society of São Paulo [SBPSP] and President of SBPSP ) and the psychoanalyst Victor Guerra (Full Member of the Psychoanalytic Association of Uruguay and President of the Child and Adolescent Committee of FEPAL) were special guests of the event. The Symposium was organized by the Child and Adolescent Committee NIA/SPPA, coordinated by the psychoanalyst MariaLucrecia Scherer Zavaschi (Full Member of the Psychoanalytical Society of Porto Alegre). The event was attended by professionals as well as by a growing number of graduated and post graduated students.

The organization of the activities included lectures performed by the guests on the topic proposed by the Symposium, as well as two collective supervisions and and the ceremony of Zaira Bittencourt Martins Award, an initiative of the Child and Adolescent Committee of SPPA (NIA) to encourage the writing of psychoanalytic papers. At lunch break, as it is a tradition of the Symposium, the guests met with NIA Committee, teachers of psychoanalytic training in childhood and adolescence and Board members to discuss the psychoanalytic training in their countries and regions.

In addition to the lectures, there was also a conference related to music and the creativepotential of intra and inter musical experiences from pregnancy presented by the musical educator and music therapist MarliBertschinger, as well as a closing activity with a musical performance by the young Villa Lobos Orchestra.

The proposed theme for the event was widely discussed by the guest lecturers with enthusiastic participation of the audience. The presentation of the themes included classical texts from Melanie Klein who studied creativity in psychoanalytical basis, Hanna Segal, as well as deepening in the contributions of Bion, Meltzer, Bick, Tustin and Winnicott to name the most classical.

The interest in the early stages of symbolization has led contemporary authors such as Anastassiou, Houzel, Grotstein, Golse, widely cited by the speakers, to develop an important contribution on psychoanalytical understanding of early development. Archaic StructureDisorder has been an issue of interest in psychoanalysis due to the high number of children with severe flaws in their subjective processes. Dr. Guerra showed numbers which indicate an exponential growth rate of children diagnosed with Archaic Structure Disorder ( which is not the same as Autism) even suggesting that it is a new epidemic, just as it is attention deficit disorder assigned to school children.

On the subject of the Archaic Structure Disorder there is a vast bibliography introducing new concepts and deepening the psychoanalytical theory; nevertheless, according to the lecturers, the search for pedagogical and behavioral treatments has still been more preferable at the expense of an attentive listening to the subjective processes undertaken by psychoanalytical studies.

A step of great importance was the initiative of Dr. Victor Guerra in producing the documentary Intersubjectivity Indicators from 0-12 months, a project which was selected by IPA as the best work of psychoanalysis diffusion for the community in all Latin America. Throughout the video presentation of parents and babies from 0-12 months in daily activities, the author shows and explains the co-constructive moments of theintersubjectivity outbreak between the baby and the caretaker. Explanations given by Dr. Victor Guerra and members of his group work are illustrated by images of spontaneous participation of nine babies and their parents and one situation of nursery environment. Health in the process of symbolization was widely debated in the film and twelve indicators have been discussed such as eye contact, imitation, feeding, rhythm, joint attention, hide and seek game.

Dr. Nilde spoke about the links that promote identification in the rudimentary ego of the newborn. Thus, the one-dimensional world, built by a rudimentary ego clinging to sensorial points prolongs its effects on the self. The environment and the mother must be sufficiently present to give the baby the points of holding. It starts the world of two-dimensionality in which the baby still does not live the object as being contained by it, but rather, adheres to it. It attaches to the mother skin, to the surface of the objects to form a self-skin: adhesive identity.

Finally, at the level of the adhesive and continuous contact between self and object, it will be established a first sphincter, a first separation between self and object. There is a permission for an identification game in which the self becomes object and then withdraws from the object, keeping it inside oneself. We are in the world of three-dimensionality.

Failures in these passages of one-dimensionality to three-dimensionality can be observed in children with autism or autistic defenses as well as in the Archaic Structuring Disorders , namely sensory, sound or epidermal hypersensitivities, difficulties in processing many sensorial sensations, tendency to interactive retraction and object detachment, difficulties to decode and integrate emotions, among others.

All these aspects of the very beginning of development have been widely theoretically debated and its clinical manifestations were discussed in the collective supervisions.

The final lecture, with the joint participation of both guests, was addressed the topic of the event: Creativity and Simbolization in times of speed. Both lecturers emphasized the importance of preserving perception, discrimination and judgement skills to form and enlarge the thinking apparatus which has been permanently attacked by the values of contemporary culture. Issues like tyranny of visibility, the urge of doing now , for example, were pointed as factors that damage the co-creation of bonds for a cohesive self. The intolerance to the sensorial emptiness can severely compromise sense of existential continuity.

There isn’t much doubt that the present time, time of urgency which glorifies permanent change and innovation on behalf of the logic of success, strongly participates in the formation of new diseases such as the archaic structure disorders. The XVII Symposium left a very strong message and an important call for the need of psychoanalytical participation in social environments of education of children and adolescents.