Overview
- Explores five children’s existential encounters in their ordinary life at the nursery
- Discusses how adults can use their own existential encounters to understand those of children
- Forges the path for psychosocial literature to look beyond the experiences of adults alone
Part of the book series: Studies in the Psychosocial (STIP)
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book is a psychoanalytic observation of five children’s existential encounters in their ordinary life at the nursery. It is among the first within psychosocial literature to go beyond adult experiences and explore the existential in young children’s lives as it plays out in their everydayness in symbolic and sensory articulations and in relationship with others; including with the author as someone who arrived looking for it. The author offers analysis in the form of a writing inquiry into meaning, by means of an on-going movement between the self and the other, the interior and the exterior, and psychoanalytic and existential-phenomenological ideas. This is illustrated through a kaleidoscopic account of May, Nadia, Edward, Baba and Eilidhs’ encounters with nothingness, strangeness, ontological insecurity, death and selfhood as these emerged in the time they spent with the author embodying different forms – from concrete objects to dreams – exemplifying an attunement to existential ubiquity. With its relational ground, this work suggests the potential for adults – including researchers, therapists, trainees, educators and parents – to attune to their own existential encounters as a path to understanding those of children.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Zoi Simopoulou is a practicing Art Therapist and Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. She trained in therapeutic work with children and young people with a focus on psychoanalytic observation and reflexive practice at Human Development Scotland.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Young Children’s Existential Encounters
Authors: Zoi Simopoulou
Series Title: Studies in the Psychosocial
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10841-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and Psychology, Behavioral Science and Psychology (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-10840-3Published: 08 March 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-10841-0Published: 28 February 2019
Series ISSN: 2662-2629
Series E-ISSN: 2662-2637
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 244
Number of Illustrations: 1 illustrations in colour
Topics: Psychosocial Studies, Existential approach, Psychoanalysis, Infancy and Early Childhood Development, Child and School Psychology