The new paradigm in children psychoanalysis: the importance of the "procedural" level in the integrated therapeutic approach

The paper tracks the general lines of a new paradigm in children psychoanalysis, defined as "Integrated therapeutic approach". The model comes from the theory of complex systems and considers the data of Infant Research as well as of the new neuroscientific discoveries about procedural memory. It is a psychoanalytic intervention in the different elements of the parents - child system, that extends itself to other figures that are relevant for the child and also the analyst enters in this system. The clinical work, that is articulated on several levels (interactive, relational and intrapsychical), is characterized by the involvement of the parents in the therapeutic process, by the flexibility of the technique and by the use of game as expression of the child-parents-analyst system. In the clinical examples here proposed, children repeat the same game during the session, but the same game assumes very various meaning in every different case. The analyst does not interpret the context of the game; the therapeutic work goes on an implicit procedural level, about "how it is the game played and how figures stay together". Every modification in the way of playing shows and expresses a modification in the parents-child system.

Keywords: Childhood, children psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, parents-child system, procedural, relationship

Emanuela Busso, Il nuovo paradigma della psicoanalisi infantile: l’importanza del "procedurale" in un approccio terapeutico integrato in "RICERCA PSICOANALITICA" 3/2011, pp 77-93, DOI: 10.3280/RPR2011-003007