Baby and the Drive : A Clinical Approach

The Baby and the Drive presents a new reading of psychoanalytic drive theory, as well as offering clinical tools for early identification of difficulties and intervention with babies and their parents.

This volume demonstrates that the concept of the drive is the crucial factor in early life. The drive is presented as a force with pathways that are established in the newborn’s psychic development. Four drive fields are distinguished, which are activated during the first year, and the volume examines the points at which they may encounter difficulties and how these difficulties may be treated. The Baby and the Drive explains that access to the drives and their activation orients work with the newborn―an operation at once fundamental and indispensable if researchers accept the existence of a subject in the newborn.

Allowing a new orientation in work with newborns and infants, this volume will be a valuable resource for academics, scholars, and students of Lacanian studies and Lacanian analysis. It will also be of great interest to Lacanian psychologists and Lacanian psychoanalysts in practice and in training.

Marie Couvert is a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist. She practises at the parent-baby unit of the Clairs Vallons Medical Paediatric Centre (Ottignies, Belgium) and the E. Cavell Medical Center in Brussels; she also has a private practice in Brussels. She teaches at the ISFSC (Higher Institute of Social Education and Communication in Brussels) and runs the graduate Seminar on Infants and Babies at the University of Louvain. She is the author of two books and several book chapters.