Therapeutic Work for Children with Complex Trauma: A Three-Track Psychodynamic Approach

Therapeutic Work for Children with Complex Trauma offers a contemporary three-track psychodynamic treatment model to mental health professionals working with traumatised children and their caregivers.

The book provides a contemporary and comprehensive approach to working with traumatised children by integrating knowledge and skills from traditional psychodynamic child psychotherapy and more contemporary trauma-informed and mentalization-based frameworks. It advocates three tracks of work, involving direct work with the child, work with the child’s primary caregivers and work with the network. The book is divided into two parts: Part I of the book covers the theoretical background and Part II discusses the core components and phases of the trauma-informed and mentalization-based treatment approach. The authors bring out the specific dynamics of the psychotherapeutic work through four composite cases woven through the book.

Written in accessible language this treatment guide is primarily aimed at psychodynamically trained psychotherapists, mental health professionals and professional caregivers working with traumatised children.

Nicole Vliegen, PhD, is Professor of Clinical Psychology at KU Leuven, Belgium, where she heads the postgraduate training programmes in Psychodynamic Child Psychotherapy and Infant Mental Health. She is a licensed psychodynamic child psychotherapist and heads the team of psychodynamic child psychotherapists at PraxisP, the clinical centre of KU Leuven.

Eileen Tang, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher in Clinical Psychology at KU Leuven and Professor in Psychology at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. She is a licensed psychodynamic child psychotherapist and is part of the team at PraxisP.

Nick Midgley, PhD, is a child and adolescent psychotherapist and Professor of Psychological Therapies with Children and Young People at UCL/the Anna Freud Centre, UK. He has edited and co-authored several books, including Mentalization-Based Treatment with Children:A Time-Limited Approach (2017).

Patrick Luyten, PhD, is Professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Belgium and Director of the PhD in Psychoanalysis Programme at University College London, UK. He heads a treatment service for patients with depression and functional somatic disorders at PraxisP.

Peter Fonagy is Head of the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College London; Chief Executive of the Anna Freud Centre, UK; Consultant to the Child and Family Programme at Baylor College of Medicine and visiting professor at Yale and Harvard Medical Schools. He has received Lifetime Achievement Awards from several national and international professional associations.