Introduction to Panel Discussion

The following papers by Susan Warshaw, Pat Pantone, and Seth Aronson, with a discussion by Neil Altman, were presented as a panel entitled “Summoning the ‘Ghost in the Nursery’: Working with Parents in Treatment,” at the 1999 Spring meetings of the Division of Psychoanalysis of APA.

Each with its own emphasis offers a unique window into the current ways that child therapists are working with their cases. In their focus on looking at and working with parents, each challenges who is/who are the primary patients.

“Parents” presented a problem, at times a nuisance, to the early child therapists. No one really denied their importance, but the question became how to work with them. We would like to think that decisions were theoretically and empirically guided, with openness to the burgeoning fields of developmental psychology and family therapy, but this was hardly so. Certain traditions evolved with the child being seen alone, and the parents seen by the same or a different therapist at less frequent intervals for parental guidance. The prevailing notion was that the child had internalized the problems, and, therefore, the child's treatment was central. External reality was ignored as the intrapsychic life of wishes, desires, and conflicts was underscored in the literature. Parent work—although it was ongoing—was relatively neglected.

Over the years we have learned from our own work and that of our colleagues in related fields about the transmission of psychopathology and the potentially pathogenic, as well as constructive, influence of parents. The following papers demonstrate how the tide has been turning as the vital, two-way connection between the parental couple and the child has been recognized in all of its dimensions of influence—intrapsychic as well as interpersonal. In absorbing the new currents percolating around our field, the authors recognize the centrality of ongoing work with parents if the child's mental well-being is to withstand the vicissitudes of devel