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.

Miriam Ben-Aaron and J. Harel are the authors of Mother-Child and Father-Child Psychotherapy: A Manual for the Treatment of Relational Disturbances in Childhood, published by Wiley. 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.