An Independent Practitioner's Introduction to Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Playing with Ideas Independent Psychoanalytic Approaches with Children and Adolescents Series

An Independent Practitioner's Introduction to Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy: Playing with Ideas is a comprehensive guide to child and adolescent psychotherapy, taking the practitioner from the initial meeting through the therapeutic process with young people of different ages, to the ending of psychotherapy. It includes approaches to working with parents and the family, introduces theoretical ideas simply and provides references for further learning.

Part of the popular Independent Psychoanalytic Approaches series, this book is written from an Independent perspective, but it is also an account of Deirdre Dowling?s approach, developed from her considerable experience of working in the NHS and now as a private practitioner.

An Independent Practitioner's Introduction to Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy will be an indispensable guide for child psychotherapists (especially trainees), colleagues working in child and family mental health settings, play therapists, counsellors and support staff in schools and child care professionals working therapeutically in residential and community settings.

Acknowledgements

Foreword Ann Horne & Monica Lanyado

Preface

Introduction

Part 1: Mapping the territory

Chapter 1 The therapeutic process

Chapter 2 Creating a therapeutic setting

Chapter 3 Making an assessment and starting the work

Chapter 4 Approaches to child psychotherapy with children of different ages

Chapter 5 Reflections on brief psychotherapy

Chapter 6 Engaging with parents

Chapter 7 Pleasures and challenges of working in a team

Part 2: Hard times: the challenges of child psychotherapy

Chapter 8 Facing despair, doubt and anger – and finding hope

Chapter 9 Learning from mistakes, losing my way and the value of supervision

Chapter 10 Working towards an ending

Part 3: Therapeutic work with children and parents in crisis

Chapter 11 Behind closed doors: therapeutic work with children and adolescents living with mentally ill and vulnerable parents

Chapter 12 Therapeutic work with children whose parents have separated or divorced

Part 4: Taking child psychotherapy outside the psychotherapy room

Chapter 13 New pathways: applying psychotherapy to other settings

Final thoughts: playing with ideas

Index

Deirdre Dowling was Head Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at the Cassel Hospital, West London Mental Health Trust. She trained at the British Association of Psychotherapists, qualifying first as a child and adolescent psychotherapist in 1991, then as an adult psychotherapist in 2006. She worked at the British Psychotherapy Foundation for 5 years as Curriculum Lead of the Independent Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training and is also a teacher and supervisor.