Countertransference in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy with Children and Adolescents

Synopsis:

This collection of papers from psychoanalysts across Europe is intended to highlight the similarites and differences between approaches to working with children and adolescents.

Description:

EFPP Monograph Series

The European Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the Public Health Service (EFPP) was founded in 1991 with a number of linked objectives. At their heart was and is a determination that knowledge and treatment skills stemming from psychoanalysis should become much more widely available and applicable to the general public with mental health problems who come for help from the "caring" professions.

In its short history, the EFPP has already made a considerable impact. Many of its member countries have been considerably assisted by the training standards for practitioners to psychoanalytic psychotherapy that the EFPP aspires to. The EFPP is organized into three sections: for individual adult psychoanalytic therapy, for child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapy, for group psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Recognition of these three vital focuses of applied psychoanalysis through structural representations in the EFPP has created a unique spirit of cooperation between the sections.

So we start our monograph series with this compilation of contributions from authors from several different European countries on a theme that lies at the heart of child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapy of children and adolescents.

Brian Martindale, Chairman EFPP

The chapters in this monograph constitute a wide ranging investigation into the phenomena of countertransference as it appears in the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of children and adolescents. The authors tackle the subject by bringing both their knowledge of various theoretical perspectives and their clinical experience and by demonstrating the crucial importance of countertransference in a wide range of clinical conditions and treatment settings.

This monograph is an addition to the previously modest literature available on countertransference in the psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis of children and adolescents. We hope it will prove useful to clinicians in the field and for the training and supervision of students in child and adolescent analysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

John Tsiantis, Editor-in-Chief

Notes about the author(s):

John Tsiantis is Professor of Child Psychotherapy, President of European Union of Medical Specialists Section of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, previously Chief Editor of the EFPP Monographs book series, and President of the Hellenic Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.