Ghosts in the Nursery - Essay Example

Analysis of Ghosts in the Nursery The paper critically analyses the reading Ghosts in the Nursery by Selma Fraiberg, Edna Adelson, and Vivian Shapiro. The article discusses the theme of disorganized attachment that is caused by parental frightening behaviors. The authors integrate the attachment theory to treat children and parents to form a good relationship. Reduction of parental frightening behaviors is a requirement to eliminate disorganized attachment. Lineages of sorrow and tragedy result in formation of ghosts that intrude on family life.

Failure to guard children from the nursery ghosts causes psychological challenges, “showing the early signs of emotional starvation, or grave symptoms, or developmental impairment” (Fraiberg, Edna, and Shapiro 388). The essay asserts that elimination of parental frightening behaviors can stop proliferation of disorganized attachment in modern families. The authors state that the attachment between family members influence the level of mischief that transient ghosts can cause during the normal baby activities of feeding, sleeping, and playing.

Thus, therapeutic work is very crucial to heal the affected families to avoid recurrences of past psychological trauma in the present life. Ghosts that invade the nursery institution should be banished through parental approach to interactions that protect the baby’s rights. The application of the attachment theory to help children heal from historical traumatic experience depends on improving the interactions between a child and a parent. Repetitive history of traumatic experience forces a child to stereotype a parent with violence.

Therefore, parental frightening behaviors impair the cognitive development of a child. The challenged mental development of a stigmatized child is what the authors identify as The Ghosts of Nursery. Thus, the metaphor identifies how a caregiver’s negative attitude impairs the intelligence and mental development of a child. For examples, in real life experience, the intelligence of a child brought up by a rejecting mother is very low since the psychological trauma prevents the child from forming positive attachment with the surrounding environment and society.

The authors assess Mrs. March’s child, who failed all the requirements of the “personal-social items on the Bayley scale” (Fraiberg et al. 391). Evidently, negative attachment between a caregiver and the child creates hatred, which impairs the cognitive development of a baby. Application of psychotherapy allows patients to visit the past and remember their stigma. The therapy makes parents realize how to use past tragedy to learn and correct the present caregiver mistakes. Clinical observation of how the child plays and reacts in the presence of parents testifies either a disorganized attachment or a positive relationship.

A real life case study involves an adolescent mother, who rejects a child because of the pain she underwent from the father who rejected her and the child. The adolescent mother shuns the child’s cried since she associated the baby with her loss of parental attachment. Living alone and without support from family, the adolescent mother faces a problem of controlling the baby’s cries. For example, the child cried often and ran away from the mother to his playing room. Moreover, the toddler exhibited attachment with the television room and the bottle since she rejected her mother’s harsh breastfeeding sessions.

The best treatment to help the mother and child achieve fondness is through application of attachment theory. The parent must learn to offer genuine parental love and care to create a positive attachment relationship with a toddler. Closeness would help the child forget the past parental frightening behaviors and approach the caregiver with confidence for protection. Likewise, the child started to breast feed after the mother eliminated the disorganized attachment by appreciating the child as a responsibility.

The therapy aided the mother to stop blaming the child for her situational circumstance. Realization of past mistakes made the adolescent mother seek for positive attachment with the child. In conclusion, the papers evaluated the Ghosts in the Nursery reading about family attachment and relationship. The authors delve into the psychoanalysis of children hurt by unfolding generational sorrows that alienate parents from performing their caregiver duties. Furthermore, the authors highlight the application of the attachment theory to encourage positive family interactions.

Attachment helps caregivers to remember past family trauma and develop methods that prevent the recurrence of similar mistakes. Disorganized attachment and parental frightening behaviors force a child reject a caregiver. Work CitedFraiberg, Selma, Edna Adelson, and Vivian Shapiro. Ghosts in the Nursery: A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Problems of Impaired Infant-Mother Relationships. Journal of American Academy of Child Psychiatry 14.3 (1975): 387-421. Print.