Treating children who do not play or talk: Finding a pathway to intersubjective relatedness.

This article explores the application of mother-infant research and systems theory in treating children whose capacity to symbolize is severely impeded. Working with children who do not play or talk involves the creation of a transitional space to foster the development of their symbolic capacities and intersubjective relatedness. The clinical material examines the unfolding of the mother-infant patterned interaction, including ruptures without repair. Therapeutic action begins with the experience of imitation, state sharing, leading to the emergence of intersubjective relatedness. Self-with-other structures shift and transform as the child is provided with the new relational experience of finding himself or herself in the mind of the other. Ideas expressed may also apply to the treatment of silent adult patients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The experiential modes of time in adolescence: The action mode, the timeless now, and nostalgia.

In this article, the author will describe three modes of time embedded in adolescence, ones that reflect the different phases of adolescence and the ongoing negotiation of separation/individuation. The first mode is the action mode, a mode specific to early adolescence where time is rapid, moving fast and furious with little room for thought or reflection. Action precedes thought; the present overshadows the past and future. In the second mode, described as the timeless mode, one related to middle adolescence, the moment or situation is drawn out and the dramatics of the exchange move into the foreground. Here, it is as though the moment is suspended in time. There is a timeless quality to the experience of others and the surrounding world. The third mode is nostalgia, an experience of time related somewhere between middle and late adolescence in which the adolescent reflects back on the idealized parents of the past in relation to his or her own child self. The past is romanticized in relation to the present. The conflict with holding onto the child self and its attendant longings, wishes, and needs bumps up against the burgeoning young man or woman inside the adolescent. There is a wish to hold on and the urge to let go, or to find some compromise in sustaining the tension between the present and past. A clinical example is used to illustrate each respective mode, its aim and purpose, and the process of integration across the past, present, and future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Countertransference in child psychoanalytic psychotherapy: The emergence of the analyst’s childhood.

The author focuses on a particular type of countertransference with children—the emergence of the therapist’s childhood memories and experiences in child psychotherapy. The revival of these childhood recollections in the analyst is not a barrier or sign of pathology as previously held, but rather in some cases a vital resource that may potentially deepen and facilitate analytic work. The therapist’s memory and attendant fantasies, physical/sensory experience, and affect states in the context of the childhood memory may afford the analyst the opportunity to not only make contact with his or her “self” as a child, but also to further symbolize these states of mind and use them in the exploration of the child patient’s mind. Through intersubjective exchanges with the patient, the analyst’s childhood memories are given new meaning in the context of the therapeutic work with the child patient. The author highlights the uniqueness of countertransference with children as compared with adults. A detailed clinical vignette is presented, organized around the arrival of a memory from the analyst’s childhood and how the analyst made use of it in the transference/countertransference field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)