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Child and Adolescent Analysis Program

Child and Adolescent (C/A) Analysis is an integral part of the Institute's training mission and is well integrated into the core program. It provides a unique opportunity to pursue analytic experience with individuals of several levels of development. The primary purpose of the program is to train and educate selected candidates to work analytically with children and adolescents. Secondarily, the program provides candidates in the Adult Program the opportunity to gain a thorough knowledge of each stage of development and its attendant pathology.

The candidates completing the Child and Adolescent Analysis Program have achieved a singular appreciation of normal growth and maturation as well as the forces that interfere with an orderly developmental progression. They have also acquired the clinical tools to help troubled infants, children, and adolescents to resume more adequate development.

Child analysts aid children with a broad range of psychological disorders that disturb the child's sense of well-being and capacities for emotional, social, and intellectual growth and development. Chronic or acute depression, anxieties, worries, fears, or conflicts can create difficulties, sometimes in the form of recognizable symptoms such as lying, stealing, bed-wetting, tics, night terrors, and hair pulling. At other times they show as personality peculiarities, as difficulties in school, family relationships, peer relationships, or as disturbances in mood and self esteem.

Child and adolescent psychoanalysis is based on a theoretical framework for understanding the emotional life of children and adolescents and is based on the observation that children are often unaware of the reasons for their unhappiness. Because factors leading to psychological distress are unconscious, the advice, encouragement, or limit setting of parents, teachers, or friends often fail to provide lasting relief. The goal of child and adolescent psychoanalysis is the removal of psychological roadblocks that are interfering with normal development. In a relationship with a trusted, helpful, and specially trained Child Analyst, the young child or adolescent is helped to become aware of the underlying causes of his or her unhappiness and/or dysfunctional behavior and to develop self understanding and new and abiding ways of coping. Varying techniques are employed to deal with the developmental capacities and vulnerabilities of children of different ages. For instance, the very young patient is helped to reveal his or her innermost wishes and worries, not only through words, but also through play. The therapeutic work with any child or adolescent widens his or her self-knowledge by reducing what must be kept out of awareness, freeing the young person of symptoms and inhibitions that have stood in the way of psychological growth.

Eligibility

Candidates eligible to matriculate in the adult program may apply for admission to the C/A Analysis Training Program by applying to the C/A Committee Chairperson who will make arrangements for interviews and a review by that committee. After reviewing the C/A Committee's recommendation, the Institute's Education Council gives the final approval for entry into the program.

Individuals whose experience with children has been limited may be asked to arrange to have special tutorials or child observation experience.

Clinical training in a child or adolescent analysis is also available to those candidates in the adult program who do not wish to become C/A analysts. Familiarity with the psychology, development, and psychopathology of children and adolescents is achieved in the core curriculum. Clinical training must be enhanced by attendance at the Child Clinical Case Conference (CCC). Any candidate in the adult program who analyzes a child or adolescent must attend the CCC during that individual's analysis.

Course Work

The curriculum of the C/A Analysis Program is fully integrated into the core program. In the first year there is a three-quarter introduction to clinical work in C/A analysis, with emphasis on its relevance to adult analysis. There is also a three-quarter course on infant and early childhood development. Given in the second year are a three-quarter introduction to the theory of C/A analysis and a two-quarter course on latency and adolescent development. At some time during the third and fourth years, three quarters are devoted to special topics, i.e. dreams, fantasy, play, termination, etc.

There are ongoing C/A analysis clinical case conferences during which children and adolescents of varying ages are presented and discussed. Candidates present their clinical work in these conferences.

Clinical Experience and Supervision

One may graduate from the Adult and the C/A Analysis by analyzing two adults, two children, and one adolescent. If one chooses to have three adult cases, graduation from the adult program may precede graduation from the C/A Analysis Program. Graduation from the Child Analysis Program can only be accomplished by analyzing two children and one adolescent.

C/A clinical experience is gained by the supervised analysis of two latency (or one latency and one pre-latency) children and one adolescent (adolescence is defined as an individual between the ages of ten and nineteen who present with adolescent developmental issues). It is desirable that a candidate's experiences include patients of different ages and gender. Two of the C/A cases are carried for a minimum of a year, and the third carried to an acceptable analytic termination.

Candidates wishing to graduate from both the C/A and the Adult Analytic Programs may take as their first case a child or an adolescent and may take into analysis two adults and one child or two children and one adult before their first formal review.

In most cases, a candidate must have both a terminated adult and a terminated child case. However, in some instances, when a late adolescent is in analysis for several years and enters adulthood prior to termination, the case may be used as both a terminated child and adult case.

All analytic cases are seen at a frequency of four or five times a week. With the first case the supervisor is consulted weekly until such time as it is deemed that less frequent supervision is warranted. Subsequent cases are supervised every other week.