How to Conceptualize Marital Conflict Within the Child’s Mind: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Work in Public Services

This paper focuses on the topic of marital conflict and how it can be conceptualized and processed in the child’s mind through a psychoanalytic intervention carried out in public services, that is, child and family mental health and social welfare services operating within the Italian public healthcare system. As is often the case in the Italian context, in public mental health services for children and their families, interventions are typically reserved for patients with multiple diagnoses, leaving at-risk cases—those requiring clinical attention—on long waiting lists. Such situations of family conflict and emotional distress observed in public child and family services, however, could benefit from psychoanalytically-informed interventions capable of preventing future maladjustment. After providing a theoretical and clinical framework of the concept of co-parenting—understood as a psychic space offered to the child to accompany them through the phases of mental growth—I will highlight the most meaningful elements from a year-long weekly psychoanalytic psychotherapy with a seven-year-old boy. I believe this child allowed his mind to begin thinking again (Bion, 1962) and to emotionally reinvest in the surrounding world, reintroducing a virtuous cycle into family life that enabled more adequate care for each member’s emotional experiences.