Introduction to Child Analysis

Fourth Year Child Psychoanalytic Training (CPT)
2020-21, 1st Trimester — Fridays, 10:15-11:45am
Julie Wood, MA
Ellika McGuire, MD
Ann De Lancey, PhD
Donald Schimmel, PhD
Denise C.K. Fort, PhD
Flaviane Ferreira, MD LMHC

View Whole Syllabus

Introduction

Welcome!

Child analysis is fun and enhances your work with adults. We look forward to learning together. This course is the first course of the first year in a four year rotation of child psychoanalysis didactics. A new cohort typically begins every other year with the result that some clinical associates might be joining a cohort “out of order”. This entire year will be focused on the theme of “An Introduction to Psychoanalysis” or rather, answering the questions: What makes child psychotherapy psychoanalytic? What is child psychoanalysis? Each of the next three years are focused on a developmental stage:

• Year 1 (2020) – Foundations for Child Psychoanalysis
• Year 2 (2021) – Treatment of children in pre-latency (about age birth to 5)
• Year 3 (2022) – Treatment of latency age children (about ages 6 – 12 or preadolescent)
• Year 4 (2023) – Treatment of adolescence and emerging adulthood (about ages 12 -24)

Each year of child psychoanalytic training follows a rhythm:

• Fall trimester is a didactic, theoretically focused course.
• Winter trimester is a focus on clinical application of concepts learned in the fall with all associates presenting their case material of child analysis or psychotherapy or family work. Reading are more process oriented and focused on specific disorders of that developmental phase.
• Spring trimester is a continuous case conference in which one or two associates present the clinical transcripts, the back and forth process between child and analyst, as material for the entire class to work with and learn from.

Learning Objectives

Clinical associates will:

1. learn the historical roots of child psychoanalysis and the subsequent multi-theoretical approaches to treatment of children.
2. identify the key features of child analytic treatment: healing as restoration of development, establishing a working alliance and treatment frame with parents or caregivers, transference and counter transference experiences unique to child work, play as the language of children, setting up a child practice, including essential play materials.
3. identify initial interventions with parents, child, and adolescent patients.

September 11, 2020 — Cohort formation and context

Presenters: Julie Wood, MA, Ellika McGuire, MD

[25 pages]

Please come prepared to discuss your desires, worries, intrigues, and gratification of working with children and families. We’ll talk together about our own motivations and skills and wishes for your training. We aim to work collaboratively as a learning and treatment community who helps children and teens and to that end we wish for your interests and curiosity to guide your training, in addition to learning the fundamentals of the practice. We’ll begin a look at the historical roots and the various multidisciplinary professions that influence contemporary child psychoanalytic treatment, including the place of child analysis in the larger analytic world. We’ll consider how adult and child analysis inform each other and deepen the work with both.

Freud, A. (1972). Child-Analysis as a Sub-Speciality of Psychoanalysis. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 53:151-156

Mahon, E. (2000). A “Good Hour” in Child Analysis and Adult Analysis. Psychoanal. St. Child, 55:124-142

Optional Reading

Feigelson, C.I. (1977). On the Essential Characteristics of Child Analysis. Psychoanal. St. Child, 32:353-361.

Edgcumbe, R. (1983). Anna Freud—Child Analyst. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 64:427-433

Solnit, A.J. (2001). Introduction and Historical Perspective. Psychoanal. St. Child, 56:3-8.

Mahon, E.J. (2001). Anna Freud and the Evolution of Psychoanalytic Technique. Psychoanal. St. Child, 56:76-95.

Kris, A.O. (2001). Discussion of “Anna Freud and the Evolution of Psychoanalytic Technique”. Psychoanal. St. Child, 56:96-100.

(Additional readings are for both weeks 1 and 2.)