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Play, Gender, Therapy: Selected Papers of Eleanor Galenson

Editor : Nellie L. Thompson

Reviews and Endorsements

‘Nellie L. Thompson, in creating this richly layered book, has foregrounded Eleanor Galenson’s innovative contributions as psychoanalyst and passionate observer of small children so that her powerful insights are immediately relevant today. Galenson’s scholarship is highlighted in her wide integration of theories from neighbouring fields and, using extended clinical illustrations, she deepens our understanding of how the processes of early play, gender awareness, and symbolisation can combine to form a developmental line of psychosexual and object-relations development, thereby extending Freud’s views. Theorising from richly textured, vivid observations of infants, Galenson also pioneered a therapeutic approach to help infants suffering from severe disturbance in the parent–infant relationship: the combined intensive dyadic sessions with individual sessions for parents brought results that one would not have believed possible. Nellie Thompson in turn succeeds in an enduring contribution to psychoanalytic and developmental scholarship.’
— Frances Thomson-Salo, Associate Professor, Past President of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society and Honorary Fellow, University of Melbourne Department of Psychiatry

‘Eleanor Galenson’s research and clinical work demonstrated an early childhood sexual phase at two years, the presence of unresolved parental regression, and the revival of early maternal and infantile self-representations during pregnancy and child-raising. Nellie L. Thompson’s lucid introduction and biography appropriately set the historical, institutional, scientific, and social context for Galenson’s achievement. Thompson has done all who work with children and the entire mental health profession an invaluable service by bringing together the original classic papers of Eleanor Galenson, a groundbreaking pioneer clinician and childhood researcher.’
— Professor Peter Loewenberg, UCLA; past Dean, New Center for Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles