COCAP Webinar Series: Reading Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis with Adolescents and Children: Learning to Surf
Author: Mary T. Brady
Interviewer: Ann Martini
Date: Sunday, April 13, 2025 | 9:00-10:15 PST
Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis Book Series
Ann Martini will interview Mary Brady about her new book,
Psychoanalysis with Adolescents and Children: Learning to Surf, in which Brady brings the reader through the challenging and vital process of working with young analysands.
Brady likens the experience to ‘learning to surf.’ While finding Bion’s metaphor that the analyst must be able to ‘think under fire’ useful, she suggests ‘learning to surf’ is more apt in psychoanalysis with adolescents and children. Drawing on this metaphor throughout the volume, she describes how the adolescent can be potentially upended, injured or even killed by emotional waves too tumultuous to manage. Surfing also evokes the often uneasy but sometimes thrilling balances of adolescence. Using clinical vignettes from her extensive experience in the field, Brady explores how to work with young people experiencing issues such as eating disorders, gender challenges, parental substance abuse and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on Bionian Field Theory, as well as the work of Donald Winnicott, she explores how analysts can surf with the adolescent or child in navigating the ebb and flow of psychic life and development.
Bios:
Dr. Mary Brady is an adult and child psychoanalyst in San Francisco. On the Faculties of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, she is recipient of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Roughton Award for her writing. Her book, Psychoanalysis with Adolescents and Children: Learning to Surf has just been published by Routledge. She is Editor of
Braving the Erotic Field in the Treatment of Children and Adolescents, (Routledge, 2022). Author of
Analytic Engagements with Adolescents and
The Body in Adolescence (Routledge 2018 and 2016 respectively). She is North American Co-Chair for the Committee on Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis (COCAP) of the IPA and is Co-Chair of the Committee of the Status of Women and Girls for APsA. For a decade has co-led a Psychoanalysis and Film group.
Ann Martini is an adult and child analyst in private practice near San Jose, California with special interests in early childhood and parent work. She is on the faculty of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis where she is a Training and Supervising analyst. She is a member of the Committee on Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis (COCAP).
Reviews:
‘Well, Mary Brady has done it yet again. This is a beautiful book, full of tumult, turbulence, bravery and grace. The clinical work is outstanding, and the image of surfing is the most apt we clinicians have ever been provided with for adolescent treatment. I used to think of tightropes, but surfing takes you forward somewhere - maybe even somewhere thrilling.’
Anne Alvarez, PhD, MACP, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist
‘In publishing this book, Mary Brady invites us to embark on a journey, and she does so with a skill that can only be acquired through years of clinical practice, deep reflection, and experience in writing and publishing in psychoanalysis. This excellent book invites us to surf its pages, glide through them, and share the exciting experience of analyzing adolescents - the true protagonists of all the significant historical changes ahead.’
Virginia Ungar, MD, Past President of the International Psychoanalytic Association (2017 – 2021)
‘Based on her clinical expertise with children and adolescents, Mary Brady’s book captures the essence and the complexity of psychoanalytic technique with young patients who are in pain and in severely damaged environments. The book includes beautiful chapters, some in collaboration with other eminent psychoanalysts. The diversity of clinical work presented here and the rigor of theory, for instance in the usage of Wilfred Bion and Donald Winnicott makes this book stand out. I have no doubt that it will be of great interest to those working in the field of mental health.’
Christine Anzieu-Premmereur, MD, PhD, Chair of the IPA Committee on Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis