Technique of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

 Technique of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

20 sessions

September 2009 - May 2010

Technique of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (TCAPP) Program is a second psychotherapy program sponsored by the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center, an accredited training institute of the American Psychoanalytic Association. TCAPP course is sponsored by the Subcommittee of Child Analysis. It is for those interested in working with children and adolescents. Previously introduced and still running is the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program (PPP), a course for psychotherapists working with adults.

 TCAPP educational goals are to increase psychotherapists’ professional competence by applying psychoanalytic ideas to psychotherapy with children and adolescents.

 Our focus is that behavior has meaning. Its understanding is the basis of all therapeutic interventions. During the course the participants will learn how to recognize and utilize child’s unconscious fantasies – emotionally distorted experience of themselves and external reality. Acknowledgment and acceptance of these distortions by children diminish their discomfort and anxiety.

As a child therapist you become the significant person in the child’s life.  Children tend to treat the therapist like some other important and familiar people in their present or earlier life. The therapist is not taken as who (s)he is, but whom children want the therapist to be. When these distortions, called transference, are recognized and properly communicated to the child, progress in therapy is achieved. The child instead of repeating his past traumas can view others and himself in a freer kind of way.

In our psychotherapeutic method we encourage the therapist to be aware of all feelings the patient evokes in him/her.  This is called using the countertransference. Not knowing the very strong feelings, both positive and negative, the child evokes in the therapist, shortchanges the therapy. Denying or suppressing the therapist’s own feelings will limit the therapy’s success.

In this course the child therapist will learn to use two main techniques – containment and interpretation. In containment the patient is allowed to evoke a particular state of mind in the therapist. The therapist interprets to the patient how and why patient tries to get rid of unwanted experiences. If this is successfully integrated, a freer person is the result.