Treating a High-Risk Mother–child Relationship

Abstract

In this paper, the author presents detailed clinical material to portray the experience of intensive therapy shared with a young school-aged boy and his very troubled mother. The therapy involved a challenging combination of triadic sessions along with dyadic child-therapist sessions observed by the boy's mother from behind a one-way mirror. The discussion centers on the impact of complex transference and countertransference experiences and recommends conjoint sessions as the first option when treating young school-aged children in relationship with a highly troubled parent.KEY WORDS: parent-child psychotherapy; high risk parent; mother-child relationship; child psychotherapy; mother-child psychotherapy. TREATING THE HIGH-RISK MOTHER-CHILD RELATIONSHIP:A CASE STUDY Shared parent-child therapy, although a relatively recent innovation in the field of child psychotherapy, is becoming a more frequent practice when the child is very young and the parent relatively healthy. In this paper, however, I will describe the joint therapy of a I am indebted to Jacqueline Hanley for her support and encouragement, without which this paper might not have been written. Thanks are also due to Jack Howard MLS for his reference assistance.