Mother-Child and Father-Child Psychotherapy

Mother-child and father-child psychology is a psychodynamic - developmental approach to relatively short-term treatment of relational disturbances in young children. The mother-child, father-child and mother-father dyads meet in weekly meetings with the same therapist in the same physical set up.The therapist as a participant observer in recurrent patterns of interactions and relations within the dyads, explicitly conveys to each parent that his/her unique role to their child is to be respected and validated. The approach is practised as a diagnostic assessment tool to help in the placing of pathology, as a preparation, in some cases, for individual therapy for the child or simultaneous treatment for child and parent, and as a treatment of choice for the relational disturbances between parents and their developmentally prelatency children.  This book provides an overview of theoretical similarities and differences in basic aspects of the parent-child therapies, and offers a detailed description of the main features of a new model that enhances the parents’ and the child’s experiential learning.

Contributors. Acknowledgements. Introduction: The historial  background of psychoanlytic psychothrapy for children. Chapter 1 An introduction to the approach. Chapter 2 The theoretical framework of the therapeutic model and an outline of links to other approaches. Chapter 3 An overview of our treatment approach: The assessment phase. Chapter 4 Establishing the frame of treatment and the formation of therapeutic alliance. Chapter 5 The therapeutic process: The functions of the therapist. Chapter 6 The parent-child dyads. Chapter 7 The work with parents outside the sessions with the child. Chapter 8 In Summary Case studies. Chapter 9 A five-year old boy in need of parental help. Chapter 10 A short dyadic treatment. Chapter 11 A girl suffering from chronic constipation. Chapter 12 'A name is given'. Chapter 13 'The missing piece'. References. Index.