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How does one engage a child in self-observation, internal exploration, and internal change? In seeing connections between his inner state and his behavior? How can one make use of childhood play as a meaningful communication? Even those who understand the theoretical issues can remain baffled about specific strategies, especially for the impulse-ridden or chaotic child.
Many analysts of adults question the whole enterprise of child analysis. This skepticism may stem from subtle defenses against encountering the painful sufferings of childhood over and over again. But, in addition, the strange cognitive immaturities of young children make individual child analysis or intensive psychotherapy seem an improbable project. In recent years, however, adaptations of technique to fit ego limitations in a wider range of adult patients have heightened interest in adaptations of technique that child analysts have been working on for a long time. In 1965, Anna Freud wrote:
We should gradually evolve a technique which fits the child perfectly, whether it is similar to the adult technique or not. But it should fit as well as the classical technique fits the adult…If you start with the idea that you must get as near as possible to the adult classical technique, you are lost, because that means having to bring the child as near as possible to adult status, which you can't do without removing yourself further and further from the reality of the child. (p. 122)
Morton Chethik is a child psychoanalyst on the faculty of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. He approaches the endeavor of child psychotherapy using the classical psychodynamic framework. There is an unwavering focus on internalized conflicts, careful defense analysis, interpretation of unconscious fantasy and transference reactions, and the thorough working-through of layers of fantasy and defense. But, at the same time, he has a marvelously clear sense of the child's internal world and point of view and