Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis: One Hundred Years After 'Little Hans'

Since Freud’s publication of 'Little Hans', advances in psychoanalytic technique and theory have transformed our clinical work with children. Individuals including Anna Freud, Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott have influenced psychoanalytic play therapy and broadened the scope of practice with them. Contemporary psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic social work clinicians often find themselves responding to misapprehensions and distortions about psychoanalytic theory and treatment created or promoted in popular culture. Furthermore, clinical practices are subject to the disruptive influence of managed mental health care and, with the ascendancy of biological psychiatry, an increasing reliance on psychoactive drugs in the treatment of children, often in the absence of sound research support.

In this book, expert international contributors explore developmental, theoretical and clinical themes in work with children. Focusing on diverse populations and varied treatment settings, they present compelling clinical cases and research that, collectively, demonstrate the efficacy and relevance of psychoanalytic ideas in the context of play therapy.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Psychoanalytic Social Work.

Karen E. Baker, MSW, LMSW, is a clinical social worker and psychoanalyst in private practice and a Distinguished Practitioner through the National Academies of Practice. She is on the faculty of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council and has published articles in Psychoanalytic Social Work and Smith College Studies in Social Work.

Jerrold Brandell, Ph.D., is founding Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Social Work and Distinguished Professor at Wayne State University School of Social Work in Detroit, USA, where he teaches clinical practice. He maintains a part-time psychoanalytic and psychotherapy practice. Previous publications include Theory and Practice in Clinical Social Work (2010).