Work with Parents: Treatment of the Parent-Child Relationship

Psychodynamic Parenthood Therapy: A model for therapeutic work with parents and parenthood

“…This is the case in interventions in which the child’s psychotherapy takes place with the parent in the room. The parent sees and hears the child’s emotional expression, learns more about the child and is witness to his or her mental development (Chethik, 1976). Other models might have a significant impact on parenthood, mainly as a result of the parent’s self-reflection, while the focus remains on the child.…”

“…Another type of significant therapeutic intervention with parents and children focuses on relationships. Winnicott and others used this strategy to work with young children (Brafman, 2001) and Chethik named it “treatment of the parent-child relationship” (Chethik, 1976, 2000) to which he devoted several chapters in his earlier work (Chethik, 1989). These approaches apparently began with the model, created following Fraiberg’s early work, which dealt with the psychotherapy model of mother-infant relations (Fraiberg et al, 1975) and short-term mother-infant psychotherapy (Cramer et al, 1990).…”

Searching for Togetherness: The Simultaneous Treatment of a Mother and Her Early Adolescent Daughter

“…Therefore, according to Sperling, an approach based on psychoanalytic insight, confronting the parent with her unconscious conflicts concerning her child, was often the most effective mode of treatment, providing an additional gain of prevention of future difficulties, as well as providing the best remedy for the difficulties at hand. The early analysts, including Dorothy Burlingham (1951Burlingham ( , 1955, Anna Freud (1950), Ilse Hellman (1960Hellman ( , 1990, and others (Kolansky and Moore, 1966;Levy 1960;Chethik, 1976;Shapiro, Fraiberg, and Adelson 1980;Sholevar, et al, 1989) agreed on the need for alteration of treatment parameters as a means to an end, that is, as a way to deal with the unconscious resistance of the enmeshed dyad.…”