Techniques of Child Therapy

This practical text offers an in-depth examination of major issues in child psychotherapy and highlights frequently encountered challenges in working with children and parents. Basic concepts of adult dynamic psychotherapy--such as the therapeutic alliance, resistance, transference and countertransference, and insight--are redefined and adapted to the special requirements of therapy with 4- to 12-year-olds. Readers are guided through a number of cases as treatment unfolds, gaining insight into all of the attendant problems, strategies, and opportunities. Yielding unique insights into the emotional and cognitive world of the child, the volume presents effective treatment strategies for a wide range of clinical problems.

Chethik has done it again! His new second edition is a fitting extension of the first. This gifted child therapist presents the basic concepts of child therapy and elaborates a detailed account of the clinical process with children and parents. Lengthy and rich case presentations include the therapist's reflections, informing the reader about the clinician's feelings, hunches, and countertransference responses. This rare account of the essence of therapy makes this text a 'must' for all practitioners dealing with children, be they student social workers, child fellows, psychology interns, or more advanced practitioners. --Judith Mishne, DSW, Ehrenkranz School of Social Work, New York UniversityThis book will be welcomed by teachers and students of child psychotherapy, both in graduate training programs and in the extension courses offered by many institutes. Chethik describes what goes into careful biopsychosocial assessment of presenting problems, and clarifies the ways in which treatment subsequently draws on that diagnostic frame. Not only does this author offer unusually rich details about beginnings, middles, and endings in play therapy with children, but he also includes the collateral and often less emphasized work with their parents at these different stages. --Jean Sanville, PhD, Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies; author of The Playground of Psychoanalytic TherapyIn an age when child treatment often consists of an expedient pharmacological 'cure,' Morton Chethik's newly revised Techniques of Child Therapy is a breath of fresh air. The merits of Chethik's dynamic approach are many, including the significance he imputes to thorough diagnostic evaluation and his emphasis on the importance of the parental alliance. Also noteworthy are the book's detailed presentations of treatment process and its discussion of more challenging cases involving severe character pathology. Wise and compassionate, this book serves as a model for the practice of dynamic child psychotherapy. It can be recommended unreservedly to novice and more experienced clinicians alike, be they social workers, clinical psychologists, or child psychiatrists. --Jerrold R. Brandell, PhD, BCD, author of Of Mice and Metaphors; Founding Editor, Psychoanalytic Social Work -

Morton Chethik, MSW, is an emeritus professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan. He is Director of the Child Psychotherapy Program at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Society and continues his private practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A current area of his writing focuses on the special perspective that child therapy provides for understanding work with adult patients.