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This paper has two purposes. The first is to describe a way of working with children that occasionally involves the parents in their therapy sessions. The second is to use this way of working to throw some light on how environmental influences in a child's life, especially the parents, become internalized, that is, how various functions that the parents provide for the child “are preserved by making them part of the self” (Burness and Bernard 1990, p. 102). I will first describe some of the thinking that has led to the development of this approach, focusing on the role of play as a vehicle for the parent-child interaction. This will be followed by a presentation and discussion of case material that I hope to use to illustrate a parent-child dynamic that seems particularly well suited to this way of working. An analysis of the material also suggests some interesting ways that certain parent-child dynamics become internalized.
Over the years I have moved in the direction of involving parents more frequently in the individual sessions of their children for several reasons. A major reason has been my experience as a child therapist, particularly the frustration of once-a-week treatments that lacked the necessary intensity to effect change that involved internalization and the altering of internal structures.