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This paper aims to contribute to recent reflections on training in psychoanalytic practice in South Africa and internationally in response to growing recognition that psychoanalytic practitioners need to be well equipped to deal with contemporary mental health challenges. Rather than add to the central and recurrent themes that authors have already identified as important areas of development in psychoanalytic training my aim is to take a more deconstructive approach. This approach involves engaging with the ways in which contemporary psychoanalytic training is constructed and the kinds of assumptions that could be described as 'haunting' these constructions. The approach also involves conceptualising these constructions and their assumptions as non-accidental. While they are clearly based in extensive engagement with experience and already existing knowledge, they might also be understood as serving particular unconscious purposes. In particular, this paper draws on psychoanalytic theorising on sibling relationships to think about the possible unconscious libidinal attachments to these constructions. In line with a psychoanalytic inquiry, my aim is to draw attention to the elements that are lurking in the margins of future training directives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) represent a major health, educational, and social challenge in South Africa. By evoking negative responses from the child's environment, the specific constellation of features associated with FASD pose a threat to the development of a positive self-concept in the developing child with FASD. These features particularly relate to mother-infant attachment disturbances, 'difficult' temperament, disruptive behaviour disorders and intellectual deficits leading to poor scholastic performance. While there is a high rate of psychopathology amongst children with FASD, little has been done to formulate these difficulties within established personality theory. Using concepts from self psychology theory, this paper illustrates how some of the features associated with foetal alcohol exposure may compromise the child's developing sense of self, which in turn may increase vulnerability to the development of psychopathology. An argument for employing Kohut's self psychology theory to attain a better understanding of, and clearer strategies for, the treatment of psychopathology in children suffering from FASD is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]