What is Child Psychoanalysis?

Question

Psychoanalysis with a kid lying on a couch doesn't make much sense. How does it differ from psychotherapy for kids?

Answer 1

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Child psychoanalysis has been something of a step-child of psychoanalysis since its birth nearly 100 years ago. Although psychoanalysis has demonstrated that the mental life of children is complex and crucial for later development, many of the techniques of psychoanalysis (e.g., free association, dream interpretation, use of the couch, use of the transference and countertransference) must be modified in order to be used with children. For example, we do not ask young, active children to spend an hour a day lying on a couch talking to an analyst who remains out of sight. However, given the necessary modifications in technique, it is quite possible to do effective psychoanalytic work with young children.

As in psychoanalytic work with adults, the child analyst tries to assist the patient in becoming familiar with their own mind – both its conscious and its unconscious regions. The goal, however, is not to create a child who thinks like an adult. Instead, the child analyst’s goal is to assist a child whose development has been derailed – usually by a combination of internal and external forces – to get “back on track” and moving along a normal developmental pathway.

There are important similarities between psychoanalytic work with children and adults. Children are especially responsive to the regularity and frequency of analytic work; the analysis and the analyst become part of their daily life. At the same time the child analyst attempts to create for the child, within the framework of the analytic sessions, a place and time where the usual rules of behavior are temporarily suspended. It is important for the child to be able to “say” – in words or in play actions – whatever comes to mind. As in work with adults, this “freedom” is often experienced as a burden; it is not easy to let things come to one’s conscious mind that one has learned to keep out of sight (and mind).

Transference becomes an issue in child analysis as in adult analysis. However, the fact that children remain immersed in very real, important relationships with their parents tends to complicate the ways in which they experience this aspect of analytic work. It is common for children in analysis to think of their analysts as “teachers” – a role with which they are familiar and which itself depends very much upon parental attitudes toward these extra-familial figures.

The child analyst often has to help the child and parents develop a sense of boundaries around the analytic work. This is especially important when the “freedom” the analyst attempts to encourage within the analytic sessions spills over into the child’s extra-analytic life. This is an area in which the work of the child analyst differs markedly from that of analysts who work with adult patients; it is very rare for analysts of adult patients to engage in ongoing contact with members of a patient’s family. Child analysts cannot afford to leave a child’s parents on the sidelines; in order to support their child’s analysis, parents need to have some idea of what is going on in the work.

Children often find the “make-believe” aspect of analytic work a welcome respite from the demands they experience from the outside world. For example, a child struggling with concerns about being unwanted may use her analysis as a place where she can create scenarios in which she is a queen, able to accept or dismiss her servants (including her analyst) on a whim. Of course, at the end of each analytic session the child (like the adult patient) must return to the real world where her concerns continue to plague her. The analysis, however, provides her with a laboratory in which she can try out new solutions to old problems . . . and, hopefully, take some of these solutions with her into her life outside the analysis.

Child analysts often spend a fair amount of time in “parent guidance” work, meeting with parents and talking with them about the details of their children’s daily life. Most parents who have children in need of analytic help have tried long and hard to help their children themselves before seeking outside help. Although parents usually are able to “tune in” to their children better than anyone else, everyone comes to parenthood accompanied by the “ghosts” of their own childhood experiences. Child analysts are sometimes able to help parents to see their children in a new light; this can be a huge relief to parents as well as to their children and it certainly helps the analytic work as well.

Answer 2

Psychoanalysis is a somewhat outdated type of child psychotherapy. It's much more mechanical and scientific in nature, tends to look at psychodynamic aspects of a person's life including past traumas, deep-seated fears, and theorized urges, compulsions, many of which were derivatives of Freud's work.

Psychotherapy is a very general term and may include many different approaches that have nothing to do with lying on a couch. Cognitive-behavioral therapy, dialectical-behavioral therapy, intergenerational therapy, play therapy, sex therapy, behavioral modification techniques, and on and on... they're all different models that have to do with exploring, restructuring or modifying thoughts, feelings and/or behavior, teaching to cope with difficult life circumstances and overcoming mental illness.

Answer 3

NO NO NO
It involves testing of a child's emotional and motor function skills. There's no lying on the couch. Children are generally very easy to talk to once you have earned there trust, some can be very creative, you have to learn to tell the fact from fiction, Good field to go into. And very fun.

I will tell you one quick story. When I was doing my internship I had this one little 7 year old black boy who confided in me that he was scared at night. I said I'm so sorry what could possibly be scaring you at night time. He said in such a sweet little voice, "I see white people". Oh my goodness I thought I would burst!!!! Bless his little heart, I was able to tell is mother and she later figured out it was a mirror reflecting passing car lights . :-)

Maybe you dont think its funny but its a life experience from me to you.

Answer 4

psychoanalysis is where you monitor the patient's response by varying degrees and such. psychotherapy is merely a conversation sometimes coming to a conclusion of a solution, and sometimes just conversing to relieve unwanted stress.