Growing points in Child Psychotherapy Practice and Research: Can West Meet East?

[This abstract set into this paper by the archivist on 2/2014 – it was saved by CU on 14/9/08 20:37 and saved in a separate file to the body of this piece below]

There are historical, social and cultural variations in how emotional and mental health are thought about and believed to develop and the place of children in society. Historical and cross-cultural comparisons can sharpen thinking about strengths and lacunae of child psychotherapy approaches developing in different countries.

This paper describes the psychoanalytic child psychotherapy emerging in Britain pre and post World War 2 and its place in today’s National Health Service. Outlining fundamentals of training and therapeutic technique, it highlights how contemporary child psychotherapy integrates findings from developmental psychology and neuroscience with psychoanalytic concepts. Examples include work with traumatised, adopted or fostered and Autistic-Spectrum children, and in parent-infant psychotherapy. An increasing emphasis on applying child psychotherapy in community settings is extending its availability to disadvantaged groups. This direction may be the reverse of that developing in some countries, where community-based work may lead to developments in more specialised contexts. Research described illustrates how a diversity of approach, from macro studies involving large groups of children, to detailed studies of psychotherapeutic processes, is necessary to obtain evidence of child psychotherapy’s effectiveness, and to promote good therapeutic technique.