About Dr. Holinger
A founder of the Center for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy, Dr. Holinger is a leading go-to expert on child development and child behavior for both the media as well as for parents and caregivers. He is renowned as a child therapist, child psychiatrist, and child psychoanalyst.
Following his medical and psychiatric training in Chicago, Dr. Holinger did a Fellowship in Psychiatric Epidemiology in Boston, where he received a Masters of Public Health from the Harvard University School of Public Health; he then did a Fellowship in Psychosocial Public Health. Subsequently, he obtained adult and child/adolescent psychoanalytic training at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis.
Currently, Dr. Holinger is Professor of Psychiatry at the Rush University Medical Center. At the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, Dr. Holinger serves on the faculty as a Training and Supervising Analyst and Child Supervising Analyst. He is Board Certified in Psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and Certified in Psychoanalysis (adult and child/adolescent) by the American Psychoanalytic Association.
Author of the critically acclaimed What Babies Say Before They Can Talk: The Nine Signals Infants Use to Express Their Feelings, Dr. Holinger blogs at Psychology Today on child development and child behavior. He has been a guest on "Parent Talk” of WECK Radio, WLS-TV (ABC affiliate), and other radio and television shows and has been quoted in numerous publications including Parent Magazine, Parenting, and many others.
About Dr. Holinger’s Book
What Babies Say Before They Can Talk
My Journey: On the Road to Raising Happy, Capable, Responsible Children
Human beings are born with a set of signals. Current research suggests there are nine inborn signals: interest, enjoyment, surprise, distress, anger, fear, shame, disgust (a reaction to bad tastes), and dissmell (a reaction to bad odors).
These are our earliest feelings. In time, these signals combine with each other and link up with experience to form our complex emotional life. Understanding these signals and how they work can make a world of difference for you and your baby. That is what this book is all about.
Remarkable successes have been achieved in the fields of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. However, in my opinion, we have come up short in two areas. First, we have not focused enough on prevention, and second, we have not done a good job of conveying to the public much of what is known in the area of child development.
When talking about prevention of emotional problems, I am referring to the conflict, depression, and anxiety that can result from the misunderstanding and poor regulation of feelings; I am not referring to the major psychotic illnesses with biological components such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, although understanding these earliest feelings can help in those conditions as well. I hope my professional colleagues will appreciate that I am trying to convey in readable fashion various features of the preverbal affective world of the infant and caregiver and the tension-regulation issues involved.
In my work, I saw that focusing on the child's signals could produce quite remarkable results.
Kalia Doner
Co-author of What Babies Say Before They Can Talk
Kalia Doner is a writer and journalist living in New York City. She is the author or coauthor of twenty-five nonfiction books on wellness and health and is currently editor-in-chief of Remedy and Diabetes Focus magazines.
Ms. Doner is also co-owner of the custom publishing company D&M Ink, Inc. Website: KaliaDoner.com