Introduction to this Training and Development Issue of Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychology

With the ardent support of Editor Susan Warshaw and the Editorial and Executive Boards, I am delighted to be introducing this special issue of Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychology (JICAP), devoted exclusively to the work of beginning child therapists. I have often felt that a long-standing deficiency within the arena of the training of psychodynamically informed clinicians has been the near exclusive reliance on conceptual and clinical writings from the “masters” within our field. This certainly makes sense regarding conceptual additions to our development. It does take years of clinical craftsmanship, observation and thinking across a wide variety of settings before nuanced contributions to the how and why of health and pathology can be added to the literature. But when it comes to clinical cases, I do not think this is nearly as true. The gap between the typical, usually highly successful process and outcome of a case presented by a senior clinician and the day-to-day strivings of a novice therapist is cavernous. This gap, while certainly providing something for the beginner to strive toward closing, is equally likely to evoke feelings of inadequacy, if not self-castigation or even despair. Perhaps more deadly, it may evoke a false self persona by the budding therapist—a far too complete assimilation of what they think they are supposed to think, act and feel like when with a child patient, and a concomitant need to disown feelings of vulnerability. This not only runs the risk of interfering with their capacity to be with their patients in the consulting room, but also at its worst, it initiates a false dialogue in the supervisory process, whereby a loss of authenticity to be dreaded by all in the field may ensue. This is especially true when process notes as opposed to verbatim recordings are used as the sole source of data in the supervisory process. Selective remembering of the treatment process, on both a conscious and unconscious level, can dis