Early Encounters with Children and Adolescents

Early Encounters with Children and Adolescents is the first training guide to use the works of beginning therapists as its focus. Far too often, therapists in training are given the "classics" to read-case histories by the masters in the field, which can sometimes leave beginning therapists intimidated or even in despair as to whether they can ever reach that level of proficiency. This book is the first to remediate that situation by providing beginners with role models they can more easily internalize through realistic case histories that reveal the ins and outs of starting in a craft that is never fully mastered. Not only are the cases themselves fascinating, but the therapists also refer to the processes they struggled with while treating these patients. Readers will thus have a striking new counterweight to the classics they will still want to read as they progress in the field. Eight beginning clinicians discuss aspects of their clinical process, including: issues of transference and countertransference; the role of supervision; doing parent consultations, especially when one is not yet a parent; cultural/racial/socioeconomic differences between patient and therapist; and the vulnerability of not understanding for long moments in treatment. Psychodynamic beginners in every discipline will find these case histories compelling, heartfelt and inspiring.

Steven Tuber, PhD, ABPP, is professor of psychology and director of clinical training in the doctoral program in clinical psychology at the City College of New York, where he has taught for nearly 30 years. He is the author of three critically acclaimed books: Attachment, Play, and Authenticity: A Winnicott Primer (2008), Starting Treatment with Children and Adolescents (2011), and Understanding Personality Through Projective Testing (2012).

1. Introduction Tuber 2. The Very First Patient: Becoming Real Together Boesch 3. How Do I Work with Parent and Child, Especially if I Am Not Yet a Parent? Yasai 4. How do I Work Long-term with a Child when I Only Have a Year to Work with Him?: The Conflicts Inherent in Time-Limited Therapy while in Clinical Training Freidin Baumann 5. Finding One's Self: Developing a Therapeutic Identity as a Beginning Therapist Doing Long-term Work Bowen 6. Modeling a Therapeutic Identity for a Beginning Therapist in Supervision Kaufmann 7. Building Safety and Containment: Responding to Challenges to the Freame with Both Parent and Child Caflisch 8. "Following the Affect": How My First Child Patient Helped Teach Me to Listen and See Royal 9. "Psychic Twins": A Pyscho-dynamically Informed Treatment of a Selectively Mute Adolescent and her Mother Berko 10. Passing the Baton from One Beginning Therapist to the Next: An Adolescent Treated by Two Successive Interns DeMille