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

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November 6, 2020 — Transference and Countertransference

Presenter: Flaviane Ferreira, MD LMHC

[25 pages]

There is no longer any doubt that children are capable of transference.

In fact, the child analyst’s main difficulty is not the absence of transference but the opposite: seeing the development of a transference of unusual intensity, with archaic components that are sometimes so massive and so violent that they become difficult for the analyst to tolerate. The management and understanding of the analyst’s countertransference as a part of the child’s communication requires closely attention to what the child’s projections induces in the analyst and what in turn is reactivated in the child by the analyst’s countertransference.

It is my hope that these articles will aid our discussion and enable us:

1. Recognize a common instinct among adults to protect and nurture the young and how it can resonate with rescues phantasies in the child.
2. Identify possible difficulties in the treatment when the child analyst focuses on being a “good” object, thus becoming the protector of the child from the “bad” object.
3. Distinguish transference/countertransference of normal erotic nature from child sexual and seductive behavior.

Bonovitz, C. (2009). Countertransference in Child Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: The Emergence of the Analyst’s Childhood. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 26(3):235-245.

Alvarez, A. (2010). Types of sexual transference and countertransference in psychotherapeutic work with children and adolescents. J. of Child Psychotherapy, 36(3):211-224.

Optional Reading

Marcus, I.M. (1980). Countertransference and the Psychoanalytic Process in Children and Adolescents. Psychoanal. St. Child, 35:285-298.