Selma Fraiberg
Encyclopedia
Selma Fraiberg was a child psychoanalyst
, author and social worker. She studied infants with congenital blindness
in the 1970s. She found that blind babies had three problems to overcome: learning to recognize parents from sound alone, learning about permanence of objects, acquiring a typical or healthy self image. She also found that vision acts as a way of pulling other sensory modalities together and without sight babies are delayed. In addition to her work with blind babies, she also was one of the founders of the field of infant mental health and developed mental health treatment approaches for infants, toddlers and their families. Her work on intergenerational transmission of trauma such as described in her landmark paper entitled "Ghosts in the Nursery" has had an important influence on the work of living psychoanalysts and clinical researchers such as Alicia Lieberman and Daniel Schechter
Author of several influential psychoanalytic texts such as:
The Magic Years
-and-
Clinical Studies in Infant Mental Health
In August of 1981, Dr. Fraiberg was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. She died two months later on December 19, 1981 at the age of 63.
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
, author and social worker. She studied infants with congenital blindness
Blindness
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...
in the 1970s. She found that blind babies had three problems to overcome: learning to recognize parents from sound alone, learning about permanence of objects, acquiring a typical or healthy self image. She also found that vision acts as a way of pulling other sensory modalities together and without sight babies are delayed. In addition to her work with blind babies, she also was one of the founders of the field of infant mental health and developed mental health treatment approaches for infants, toddlers and their families. Her work on intergenerational transmission of trauma such as described in her landmark paper entitled "Ghosts in the Nursery" has had an important influence on the work of living psychoanalysts and clinical researchers such as Alicia Lieberman and Daniel Schechter
Daniel Schechter
Daniel S. Schechter is an American psychiatrist currently living in Geneva, Switzerland. He is known for his clinical work and research on intergenerational transmission or "communication" of violent trauma and related psychopathology involving parents and very young children...
Author of several influential psychoanalytic texts such as:
The Magic Years
-and-
Clinical Studies in Infant Mental Health
In August of 1981, Dr. Fraiberg was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. She died two months later on December 19, 1981 at the age of 63.