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In the fall of 2019, a much-publicized court case brought to national attention the issues of patient-doctor confidentiality when it comes to reporting the deaths of newborns in the United States. It is unclear whether the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade will lead to more cases like this. This article discusses issues of countertransference, as well as the ethical and legal implications were it to be a psychiatrist, in active treatment of such a patient, who would be required to make such a report. More specifically, as in the publicized court case, the patient could be a minor at the time, receiving treatment from a child psychiatrist. The implications of such a case include how countertransference affects the perception of fatal child neglect compared to intentional neonaticide; the ethical dilemma of generating a mandated report with the goal of child safety when such a report could lead to real legal consequences for a minor child; and considerations regarding continued treatment of a patient after such a report is made. It is likely that countertransference, shaped by attitudes toward mothers and idealized views on mothering, may play a large role in all these circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its inception in the 1900s, the concept of countertransference has been mired in controversy. Psychoanalytic literature is divided on its utility, significance and its clinical value in psychotherapy. While some psychotherapists have advocated for the importance of therapists' expertise in the comprehension and processing of countertransference dynamics in the treatment of sexually abused children, others see no value in competency in countertransference in trauma treatment of sexually abused children. The purpose of this article is to explore whether countertransference is a useful therapeutic tool, or a hindrance in the treatment of sexually abused children. A qualitative paradigm, particularly interpretative phenomenology, was employed in this research to make meaning of the therapists' experiences. The analysis of the results revealed the following five main themes that were supported by 18 superordinate themes. These themes reveal that therapists treating sexually abused children experience a myriad of feelings, including a) feeling emotionally overwhelmed, b) anger toward perpetrators and the need to protect and rescue their patients, c) the importance of social support and self-healing, d) feelings of empathy and identification with the client, and e) erotic countertransference. These findings reveal two contradictory findings. Firstly, they tell of variable utilisation of countertransference among participants and, secondly, they highlight a lack of application of countertransference in the treatment of sexually abused children. The implications of the current study are that there is a need to both highlight the importance of countertransference as a therapeutic tool and to incorporate it in the treatment of sexually abused children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the work of supervision of work, discussed in a group facilitated by a child psychotherapist in a Children and Families Centre in Italy. The supervisor describes the supervisory role and the usefulness of examining the transference and countertransference, in supporting the developing capacity for containment and reflection in the multidisciplinary group discussions. The paper continues with further sections written by different members of the group, including two teachers, a child psychotherapist and a social worker in which they describe their work and the understanding of it which has emerged through discussion. The region where this work takes place is generally socially deprived, with few work opportunities, quite a lot of substance abuse and intergenerational trauma. The supervisor encourages the group to look at the transference, and more especially the countertransference, and what is split off by children and adults and projected into the workers. The examination of the countertransference is seen as an important source of insight into what can be contained and understood in terms of working therapeutically with parents and children in contact meetings and in helping the Family Court to reach decisions about whether children should remain with their parents or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes how body language and non-verbal communication assist in treating patients who have suffered from developmental traumas. Body-psychotherapies, such as psychodynamically based dance movement therapy, have been influenced by and, in turn, have influenced a number of research and applications fields. Cognitive neuroscience has in particular demonstrated the importance of physiological or bodily dimensions in the interactions and relationships.

The concept of vicarious resilience captures the therapist's emotional growth occurring as a direct result of therapeutic engagement with traumatized clients. Three chronological case scenarios are presented for exploration of vicarious resilience in relation to attachment trauma. The purpose is to increase awareness and appreciation of the positive functions it serves for client mentalization, therapist skill and resilience factors for both parties. The reflective methodology considers the intrapsychic worlds of the client and the therapist and details how the therapist comes to experience the client's distressing projections. The potential for vicarious resilience begins from the outset of the therapist's actions of containment upon these projections. Advancing early ideas, it is advocated that vicarious resilience requires the therapist to have both the capacity and willingness to maintain a constant reflective stance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The clinic of patients, victims of incest in childhood, invites us to question the fate of such psychical trauma and working-through issues offered by psychoanalytical treatments. Differentiation and articulation between the registers of the act and the factual reality, and those of fantasies and psychical reality, are at the heart of the psychoanalytical approach of incest. But, despite the theoretical contributions of Ferenczi on early trauma and because of a misunderstanding of the “abandonment of Neurotica” by Freud, psychoanalysis, until recently, has been accused of ignoring the specific sexual trauma by favouring only the psychical reality. A reassessment of this theory precedes a reflection on various figures of incest worked through in psychoanalytic literature: if the father-daughter incest is considered relatively often, mother-child incest, which is more rare in its genital forms, is nevertheless common on the form of perverted care, and is just as psychologically harmful. The difficulties of counter-transference work under intense transference reactivation show that the psychotherapist is attacked in his mental capacity to contain and associate. The particular destructiveness of incest trauma lies in its attack of the œdipal organization and its structuring value. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article considers why we need to take a biopsychosocial perspective in assessment and treatment of individuals. Using psychological concepts drawn from drive theory, ego psychology, object relations, attachment theory, self psychology and relational theory, the author makes explicit the need to connect these ideas with social and biological contexts. Arguing that psychodynamic theories contain the social as well as the psychological, the author traces Freud's social commitments, the role of critical race theory, the importance of social contexts in shaping development while also considering the effects of neglect, trauma and abuse on the developing brain. Holding in mind all of these positions, is what makes clinical social work truly the impossible profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes efforts to integrate vicarious trauma (VT) content into a fourth semester required course. Drawing on the literature of burnout, empathy, countertransference and VT, four pedagogical concepts are discussed: knowledge about trauma, personal attitudes and reactions, organizational awareness and spiritual renewal. Self-care is described to ameliorate the emotional and cognitive effects of VT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the application of selected concepts from classical psychoanalysis, ego psychology, object relations theory, and self psychology to the assessment and treatment of child abuse. Child maltreatment is conceptualized as deriving, in part, from impaired symbiotic and separation-individuation experiences. The role of certain defense mechanisms employed by the formerly abused parent in perpetuating intergenerational cycles of abuse is explored. Disturbances in the development of the ‘nuclear self’ (as postulated by Kohut) in abusive parents are considered. Fairbairn's model of the inner object world is used to illuminate scapegoating processes. The concept of ‘protectiveness’ is discussed in relation to the abused child's use of primitive defenses and inhibition of autonomy. Countertransference issues are viewed in relation to the problem of workers' ‘burnout.’ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]