The Psychology of Early Parenthood & Therapeutic Approach of Parent-Infant Relationship: Working with Ghosts & Angels in the Nursery

• How do parents experience their life with the newborn?
• How do mothers and father perceive their infant?
• What kind of emotions and feelings do they experience and does their emotional state has an influence on bonding?
• What happens when they can’t enjoy it?
• What kind of psychological support is useful in perinatal period for parents and newborn?
Parenthood is a process of psychological development and could be understand as a developmental crisis – that involves challenges that must be overcome by parents, but also resources that must be discovered.
The parent’s own history is reactivated during the perinatal period, and the understanding of parental postnatal difficulties contributes to a good bonding and healthy interactions with the child.
The presentation addresses the concept of “ghost in the nursery” proposed by Selma Fraiberg (1975) describing the ways in which parents, re-enact with their infants unresolved conflicts from their own early relational difficult experiences, as well as that of “angels in the nursery” proposed by Alicia F. Lieberman (2005). Parental narcissistic scenarios (Manzano, Palacio-Espaza, Zilkha) can overshadow the bonding and baby’s development: they affect how the parent perceives and relates to the baby.
The presentation illustrates the way these approaches may be integrated into the therapeutic consultations after birth. The therapeutic intervention aims to dissolve the parental projections, increase parental sensitivity to the baby and enhance pleasant feelings. The parent’s past positive experiences strengthen parental experiences and skills. Some case studies will be presented to illustrate the use of these concepts in the process of psychological support in the early period, describing also some principles of effectiveness in parent-baby therapeutic consultations.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE SPEAKER
NAME: SIMINA ANGELESCU
AFFILIATION: THE ROMANIAN MATERNOLOGY ASSOCIATION, ROMANIA
Simina Angelescu is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, a Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator, the manager of the Franco-Romanian “BebeBienvenu” Association and vice-president of the Romanian Maternology Association.
She is certified in Maternal Mental Health with Postpartum Support International, USA (2019). Simina started her professional activity in 2002 as a researcher in the field of Human Performance Psychology (high performance sports) and trained as a parent – child / adolescent psychotherapist. She worked also as a psychotherapist with an NGO offering support for abandoned children, developing her abilities in the field of attachment pathology and developmental trauma. She developed a special interest in prenatal psychology, birth psychology and the parent-child relationship. Simina is trained also as group psychotherapist in Psychodrama (member of the Romanian Classical Psychodrama Association) and specialized in Drama-therapy and NeuroDramatic Play with dr Sue Jennings (UK).
Since 2009 she’s focused her activity and enriched her professional experience in the field of Perinatal Psychology, by expanding her private practice with psychological counselling services for pregnant women, psychotherapy for women in postnatal difficulty and their families.
As a Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator she organised groups and educational workshops for future parents: healthy pregnancy and childbirth, natural parenting courses, as well as experiential groups for pregnant women on prenatal bonding.
Simina specialised in 2015 in Clinical Maternology (in France) – the science of the mother-baby relationship that focuses on the therapy of maternal difficulties and perinatal emotional and mood disorders – in order to initiate in Romania prevention and psychotherapy programs for pregnancy, parents with postpartum difficulties and their children in the firsts years of life.
For several years she has been organising and facilitating postpartum emotional support groups for mothers and babies. Since 2017 Simina is a member of ISPPM and organised a Romanian working group on perinatal psychological support.