Parent-Focused Child Therapy: Attachment, Identification, and Reflective Function

Today more pediatric therapists are centering their work on the parent-child relationship and are turning to parents as a primary modality in solving children's problems. Parent-Focused Child Therapy: Attachment, Identification, and Reflective Functions is an edited collection, drawing from leading psychotherapists with specialties in family therapy. Carrol Wachs and Linda Jacobs tap into the current literature on the efficacy of working with parents in therapy situations. The collected essays in this book, from renowned psychotherapists, focus on identifying and evaluating a variety of approaches and their effects on standard questions of attachment, identity, and reflection in dealing with children in therapy. Parent-Focused Child Therapy is especially attractive given its currency, integrating relational theory, attachment theory and infant research.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Parent-focused Treatment Chapter 2 Introduction and Commentary on Chapters Chapter 3 Managing Childhood Behavior Chapter 4 Parental Level of Awareness Part 5 Trauma: Precursors and Aftermath Chapter 6 Projective Identification and the Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma Chapter 7 Preschoolers' Traumatic Stress Post-9/11 Part 8 Common Treatment Situations Chapter 9 The Initial Meetings Chapter 10 The Vulnerable Child Chapter 11 The Vulnerable Parent Chapter 12 Working with Easting Disorders Chapter 13 The Parent-Child Mutual Recognition Model Chapter 14 Working with Divorced and Divorcing Parents Part 15 Developing Refelctive Functions Chapter 16 Reflective Functioning As A Change Promoting Factor Chapter 17 Representation, Symbolization and Affect Regulation Chapter 18 Integrating School Consultation and Parenting Skills

About the Author :
Carol Wachs, Psy.D. co-authored Parent Therapy: a Relational Alternative to Working with Children with Linda Jacobs. Dr. Wachs has a private practice in New York City. She has worked in the public mental health sector and also works in collaboration with physicians in New York. Linda Jacobs, Ph.D. is associate professor, Department of Human Development and Leadership, Long Island University. Dr. Jacobs is a psychoanalyst and professor of graduate studies in school psychology. She is the co-author of the book Parent Therapy: a Relational Alternative to Working with Children with Carol Wachs (Aronson, 2002) and is in private practice in New York City.

Review :
The overall strength of this text lays in its emphasis on the necessary inclusion of parents in the mental health work with children-an important and timely contribution to the field of child therapy....this text delivers diverse perspectives on the inclusion of parents in child therapy....the overall diversity of approaches will only serve to strengthen the reader's skills when working with parents and children in therapy. As a whole, the book will provide the advanced reader with insight and guidance on working with parents and their children in the clinical setting.