Child psychoanalysis

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Child psychoanalysis is a sub-field of psychoanalysis which was founded by Anna Freud.

Contents

History

The work of Sigmund Freud was the talk therapy, and his theories regarding childhood experiences affecting a person later in life. His legacy was continued by his daughter Anna Freud in her pursuit of psychotherapy and her fathers theories as applied to children and adolescents.

In 1941, Anna helped found the Hampstead Nursery in London, where she treated children for several years until it was shut down in 1945. Anna, with the help of Kate Friedlaender, soon opened the Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic to continue her work and to continue sheltering homeless children. Anna was the director of the clinic from 1952 until her death in 1982, following which it was renamed the Anna Freud Center as a memorial for the care and support she provided to hundreds of children over the decades. [1]

Much of Anna's published papers and books reference her work at the Hampstead Nursery and Clinic. Some of her more famous books are "The Ego and Defense Mechanisms", which explored what defense mechanisms are and how they are used by adolescents, and "Normality and Pathology in Childhood" (1965), which directly summarizes her work at the Hampstead Clinic and other facilities. [1] In fact, it was her work at the Nursery and the Clinic which allowed Anna to perfect her techniques and establish a therapy specifically designed for improving child and adolescent mental health.

Techniques

Anna's first task in developing a successful therapy for children was to take Sigmund's original theory regarding the psycho-social stages of development and create a timeline by which to grade normal growth and development. Using this line, a therapist would be able to observe a child and know whether they were progressing as other children or not. If a certain aspect of development lagged, such as personal hygiene or eating habits, the therapist could then assume that some trauma had occurred and could then address it directly through therapy. [1] [2] [3]

Once a child was in therapy, techniques had to continue to change. Foremost, Anna knew that she could not expect to create situations of transference with the children as her father had done with his adult patients. [2] [3] The parents of a child in psychotherapy are typically still very active in their lives. Even when children were being housed at the Clinic, Anna encouraged mothers to visit frequently to ensure a stable attachment was formed between parent and child. [1] In fact, one of the most important features of child psychotherapy is the active role parents play in their child's therapy, knowing exactly what the therapist is doing, and their lives outside of therapy by helping the child implement the techniques taught by the therapist. [3] So, to avoid becoming a replacement parent and avoid having the child view her as an authoritative adult, Anna did her best to take on the role of a caring and understanding adult figure. [2] To this day, child psychotherapists aim to be viewed by the patient as a person analogous to a teacher. [3]

The goal of any psychotherapist is for the patient to find comfort in their stable presence and eventually have no issue with speaking whatever comes to their mind. With children, this involves a high frequency of visits with the child, possibly even daily sessions. [3] Anna also saw child's play as their way of adapting to reality and confronting problems they faced in their real lives. [1] For this reason, therapy sessions are intended to suspend the rules of reality and allow the child to play and speak whatever they want. This play allows therapists to see where the child's traumas lie and help the child overcome these traumas. [3] However, Anna also realized that children's play does not reveal some unconscious revelation. [1] Children, unlike adults, have not yet repressed events or learned how to cover up their true emotions. Often, in therapy what a child says is what a child means. This differed greatly from the original practices of psychotherapy that often had to decode meaning out of the patient's words. [2]

Newest developments

In recent years there has been a shift in analytic technique for severely disturbed or traumatized children from a conflict- and insight-oriented approach to a focused, mentalization- oriented therapy. [4] [5] Furthermore, the importance of parent work in the context of child psychoanalysis has been emphasized. [6] Short-term psychoanalytic therapy which combines focus oriented techniques in the psychoanalytic work with the child with focused parent work [7] has been shown to be effective especially in children with anxiety disorders and depressive comorbidity. [8] [9]

Related Research Articles

Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedic article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and analytical psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anna Freud</span> Austrian–British psychoanalyst (1895–1982)

Anna Freud CBE was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian–Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contributed to the field of psychoanalysis. Alongside Hermine Hug-Hellmuth and Melanie Klein, she may be considered the founder of psychoanalytic child psychology.

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Transference is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which repetitions of old feelings, attitudes, desires, or fantasies that someone displaces are subconsciously projected onto a here-and-now person. Traditionally, it had solely concerned feelings from a primary relationship during childhood.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Play therapy</span> Childrens mental health therapy method

Play therapy refers to a range of methods of capitalising on children's natural urge to explore and harnessing it to meet and respond to the developmental and later also their mental health needs. It is also used for forensic or psychological assessment purposes where the individual is too young or too traumatised to give a verbal account of adverse, abusive or potentially criminal circumstances in their life.

Self psychology, a modern psychoanalytic theory and its clinical applications, was conceived by Heinz Kohut in Chicago in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, and is still developing as a contemporary form of psychoanalytic treatment. In self psychology, the effort is made to understand individuals from within their subjective experience via vicarious introspection, basing interpretations on the understanding of the self as the central agency of the human psyche. Essential to understanding self psychology are the concepts of empathy, selfobject, mirroring, idealising, alter ego/twinship and the tripolar self. Though self psychology also recognizes certain drives, conflicts, and complexes present in Freudian psychodynamic theory, these are understood within a different framework. Self psychology was seen as a major break from traditional psychoanalysis and is considered the beginnings of the relational approach to psychoanalysis.

Child psychotherapy, or mental health interventions for children refers to the psychological treatment of various mental disorders diagnosed in children and adolescents. The therapeutic techniques developed for younger age ranges specialize in prioritizing the relationship between the child and the therapist. The goal of maintaining positive therapist-client relationships is typically achieved using therapeutic conversations and can take place with the client alone, or through engagement with family members.

Attachment-based psychotherapy is a psychoanalytic psychotherapy that is informed by attachment theory.

Transference neurosis is a term that Sigmund Freud introduced in 1914 to describe a new form of the analysand's infantile neurosis that develops during the psychoanalytic process. Based on Dora's case history, Freud suggested that during therapy the creation of new symptoms stops, but new versions of the patient's fantasies and impulses are generated. He called these newer versions "transferences" and characterized them as the substitution of the analyst for a person from the patient's past. According to Freud's description: "a whole series of psychological experiences are revived not as belonging to the past, but as applying to the person of the analyst at the present moment". When transference neurosis develops, the relationship with the therapist becomes the most important one for the patient, who directs strong infantile feelings and conflicts towards the therapist, e.g. the patient may react as if the analyst is his/her father.

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Dorothy Trimble Tiffany Burlingham was an American child psychoanalyst and educator. She had a love relationship with Anna Freud and also was a partner of her work and investigation, Burlingham is known for her joint work with Freud on the analysis of children. During the 1960s and 70s, Burlingham directed the Research Group on the Study of Blind Children at the Hampstead Clinic in London. Her 1979 article on blind infants, "To Be Blind in a Sighted World," published in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, is considered to be a landmark of empathic scientific observation.

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Ilse Hellman Noach was an Austrian-British psychoanalyst and child development expert. She worked with child evacuees from London with psychological issues in the first two years of the Second World War under the employ of the Home Office before working at Anna Freud's Hampstead War Nurseries until the war was over. Hellman trained in psychoanalysis under Dorothy Burlingham and worked at Burlingham's and Freud's Hampsead Child Therapy Course and Clinic from 1945 until her retirement in 1992. She published From War Babies to Grandmothers: Forty-Eight Years in Psychoanalysis in 1990.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Owen, A. (2001, May). History of Psychology Archives. Retrieved November 2011, from http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/afreud.htm Archived 2012-04-07 at the Wayback Machine
  2. 1 2 3 4 Boeree, C. G. (1998). Retrieved November 2011, from http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/annafreud.html
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Brinich, P. M. (n.d.). Child Psychoanalysis. Retrieved November 2011, from Paul M. Brinich, Ph.D.: http://bellsouthpwp2.net/p/m/pmbrinic/html/child_psychoanalysis.html Archived 2012-04-14 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ↑ Fonagy P, Target M: Mentalisation and the changing aims of child psychoanalysis. In: Klitzing K von, Tyson P, Bürgin D (eds.): Psychoanalysis in childhood and adolescence. Basel: Karger 2000; p. 129–139.
  5. ↑ Klitzing K von, Tyson P, Bürgin D (eds.): Psychoanalysis in Childhood and Adolescence. Basel: Karger 2000.
  6. ↑ Novick KK, Novick J: Working with parents makes therapy work. Lanham: Jason Aronson 2005.
  7. ↑ Göttken T, Klitzing K von: Manual for short-term psychoanalytic child therapy (PaCT). London: Karnac 2014.
  8. ↑ Göttken T, White LO, Klein AM, Klitzing K: Short-term psychoanalytic child therapy for anxious children: a pilot study. Psychotherapy (Chic) 2014; 51: 148–58.
  9. ↑ Klitzing K von, White LO, Otto Y, Fuchs S, Egger HL, Klein AM: Depressive comorbidity in preschool anxiety disorder. J Child Psychol Psychiatr 2014; 55: 1107–16.
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