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This book is dedicated to Selma Fraiberg, who wrote about the problems of early childhood sixty years ago, and her work has been influential in the authors' approach. They also draw upon the findings of many renowned experts in the field of early life trauma such as Daniel Stern, Allan Schore, Bessel van der Kolk, and, of course, John Bowlby. It is a manual on how to treat both parents and children who have been traumatised by witnessing or enduring physical violence. The writers emphasise that it is only a guideline as each case is individual and unique. Their main concern is always for the welfare of the children concerned.
The book is divided into three sections, the first describing a relationship-based treatment model which highlights the importance of relationships in early mental health. They reiterate the main concepts of attachment theory and write that: “Children who observe and imitate aggression from an early age are more likely to become aggressive adolescents and adults and to use aggression as a way of coping with stress in intimate relationships” (p. 5), and go on to state that: “Child-parent psychotherapy has the goal of helping children modulate negative emotions, express feelings in socially acceptable ways, and learn age-appropriate ways of recognizing and respecting the parent's motivations and feelings” (p. 5).
They set out five basic premises about the quality of early relationships and the effects they have on the children involved and point out that “the clinician's efforts to bring about positive change in the parent-child relationship can succeed only if the clinician's interactions with the parent and the child are based on sensitivity, empathy, and respect for their experience” (p. 7), as one would hope for in any therapeutic intervention.
Child-parent psychotherapy involves a collaborative agenda between the clinician, the parent (usually the mother), and the child, and is dependent upon the attachment styles of both parent and child and t