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Our work with children whose rights have been violated, with their families devastated by family violence and where the majority have been left out of the sociocultural systems and experiencing serious economic and educational difficulties, has taken us to our professional limit. The solitary and individual work, in the dim light of the office, left us without tools. As therapists, we can say that it has been necessary to break with our own mental schemes and to take a leap into the territory, the terrain itself. The learned university theories were questioned, forcing us to include a more humanising and less judgmental look at the work. A psychology of the trench was born for us. This paper articulates a work process that required something more than specific training in our subject matter. It summoned us as human beings capable of hosting suffering. From this starting point, and with an open mind and heart to go through its stages, this process is presented as a journey with advances and setbacks in its intervention modalities, systematising programs in permanent construction. Systematising practices is not an easy task. Familias Cuidando (Caring Families) and Adoptar es Posible (To Adopt is Possible) are the developmental spaces of our trench practices, practices that aim to accompany children, adolescents, and their families through the system of promotion and comprehensive protection of their rights. From Vicente López, a district in the province of Buenos Aires, our psycho‐socio‐educational and legal approach tries to be a link within collaborative and supportive practices; establishing ties, networks, and dialogues to strengthen the new paradigm aiming to support listening to the voice of children and adolescents; rescuing their childhoods, resignifying the different family models, and accompanying the construction of a life project for each one, in which we all fit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The therapeutic alliance (TA) has been shown to be a predictor of psychotherapy treatment success. In the case of psychotherapy with children, there is a dearth of information on TA's role. The aims of the paper are: (1) To estimate the therapist effects on children TA; (2) to investigate if therapists' TA predicts children's TA; (3) to analyze if children's age and sex predict children's TA; (4) to evaluate if the therapist's characteristics predict children's TA. Methods: The sample consisted of 77 children undergoing psychotherapy in Argentina, and the therapists (N = 29) providing services to those children. The assessment tools utilized for the study included the Therapy Alliance Scale for Children and the Personal Style of the Therapist Questionnaire (PST‐Q). Results: Findings indicated that 2% of the children's TA was explained by the therapists (ICC = 0.02), while 17% of the therapists' TA was explained by the therapists (ICC = 0.17). Therapists' TA predicted children's TA. Children's age and sex did not have an effect on their own TA. Moreover, therapists with more experience achieved higher scores of children's TA. Finally, the Operative dimension of the PST had a negative effect on children's TA (i.e., therapists who prefer more spontaneous interventions over structured ones may experience higher levels of therapeutic alliance with child patients). Conclusion: We found a positive effect of the therapist's TA on children's TA, especially in the preference for using more spontaneous intervention techniques. We discuss the implications of the findings on the training of psychotherapists who provide services to children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author shares a personal account of 50 years of experience practicing psychodynamic psychiatry and psychoanalysis after migrating from Argentina to the United States. Her career developed in parallel as a clinician and as an academic psychiatrist, with leadership roles in the American Psychiatric Association, the Association of Women Psychiatrists, and the American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis. After describing what constitutes the essence, substance, and form of psychoanalysis, she reviews the historic shift within psychoanalysis in the United States from intrapsychic dyadic practice with selected patients to the application of psychodynamic concepts to everyday psychiatric care of patients with complex morbidities in multiple clinical settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a historical journey through the concepts developed (i.e., worked, modified, and made more complex) over four decades in the existence of one of the first family therapy institutions in Argentina: the CEFYP. This journey travels from its beginnings, in the midst of the military dictatorship, to the present. The concepts will be introduced and discussed taking into account those concepts that emerged and stood out as we worked therapeutically, enriching our clinic in each new paradigm. We will start from the CEFYP's emergence within the socio‐political framework of Argentina in the 1970s, its constitution as differentiated from the prevailing psychoanalytic context within the field of psychotherapies, and its evolution, an evolution that was always attentive to the particular questions that accompanied its relational approach. These questions, which intersected philosophy, anthropology, art, and critical history, will express the position of the CEFYP in relation to change, history, power, dialogue, and the therapist and their place in the process of change. Finally, it will also discuss the CEFYP's way of thinking and developing the teaching and training of relational systemic therapists. This article will also present the most outstanding clinical themes, exemplified with the use of vignettes. Among others, these include our trajectories in the clinic of violence and partner violence, the clinic in destructive divorces, and the clinic with seriously disturbed families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid‐19 pandemic brought a heightened fear of death and illness, and increased experiences of isolation, loneliness and aloneness. In this article we describe clinical experiences of psychotherapists in Argentina, the UK and Germany in order to explore how the impacts of the pandemic are variously felt and mediated by inner resources. We explore the capacity to relate internally to good experiences of infancy and a secure internal world, and the risks of loneliness, and interpersonal and intrapsychic withdrawal, that lead to vulnerability in patients and therapists. We contrast instances where psychotherapy in response to increased fears of death, infection and isolation is facilitative of change and growth, with situations where perverse, destructive or defensive relating predominate. We ask if we are witnessing and, through our therapeutic activities, contributing to the emergence of new ways of understanding the internal conflicts of this Covid‐19 age, and tentatively identify some key emerging themes; the capacity for facilitative interactions and change; identifications with the powerful virus; an increase in paranoid anxieties and the potential for a more considerate, 'care‐full' way of relating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents a case study in which Cognitive‐Integrative psychotherapy was used to treat a patient with obsessive‐compulsive disorder with the implementation of routine outcome monitoring (ROM) at Aiglé Foundation in Argentina. The patient, a 34‐year‐old female with a university degree reports having obsessive ideas about dirt or pollution, causing harm to others, and religious and superstitious topics on a daily basis. The therapeutic process carried out during the first 17 psychotherapy sessions is described: construction of the therapeutic alliance, psychoeducation, and main interventions. The purpose of the article is to describe a case in which the measures' results did not show clinically relevant improvement even though the clinical indicators assessed by the therapist and the patient's subjective evaluation were positive. The article, shows the application of ROM during the supervision process, proposes interpretations of these results, and discusses decision‐making processes in the light of this discrepancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]