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This book is written by seven experienced clinicians from Finland: four training and supervising psychoanalysts (Christel Airas, Elisabeth Haapatalo, Merja Kaleva and Leena Linna-Koskela) and three psychoanalysts and trainers in psychotherapy (Mervi-Marja Mero, Inkeri Suominen and Maarit Veikkolainen). Two of them are psychologists, and five of them are psychiatrists and/or child psychiatrists. All of them are child and adolescent psychoanalysts and members of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) and the Finnish Psychoanalytical Society. ‘Case studies in child and adolescent psychoanalysis: treating trauma, anxiety and aggression’ describes the treatment of children with intensive four-times-a-week psychoanalysis. This book contains six full case studies from the start of the treatment up to the end.
Finland is reported to be one of the happiest countries in the world (Helliwell et al., 2025). However, even in this Nordic welfare state, there is a growing number of young people and their parents seeking help for mental health problems. A child said to one of the authors of the book ‘… but granny, during my lifetime there have always been wars’ (Linna-Koskela, oral statement). Children are very aware of the threats in our environment, such as wars, civil unrest, natural disasters and climate change. When added to such general
insecurities, more personal problems in life may exceed the child’s and parents’ ability to cope.
With sufficient help from close adults, usually parents, children form good-enough internal objects, internalise mental functions and gradually acquire a growing ability to maintain a sufficient sense of security and an ability to mentally soothe themselves in anxiety-provoking situations and circumstances. Children form internal representations of the helping adults in their life. However, not all children are helped enough by devoted adults or peers to be able to share their thoughts and emotional experience, and they are not suppor