You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Kenneth Barish offers a memorable vignette in both of his engaging, thought-provoking, and wisdom-filled books, Emotions in Psychotherapy: An Integrative Framework , and Pride and Joy: A Guide to Understanding Your Child's Emotions and Solving Family Problems . He talks about Julia, an acting-out 5-year-old girl who had become embroiled in a familiar cycle of challenging behavior, parental criticism, and familial turmoil. Barish recommended that Julia's parents empathize with her feelings and, in the spirit of collaborative problem solving, allow Julia to express some of her own helpful suggestions. Rather than telling her parents how she should be in charge of the house or get whatever she wanted, Barish relates how this 5-year-old offered the most profound advice, “Tell me there will be a next time.” It is this phrase that captures the essence of Barish's work, expressing the hope for reparation, desire for empathy, and wish for an evolving emotional experience that underlies Barish's view of child therapy and development.
In Emotions in Psychotherapy, Barish speaks to a professional audience, while Pride and Joy serves as its mainstream parenting complement. As the title suggests, Emotions in Psychotherapy focuses on the role of emotion in working with children, emphasizing the importance of helping children learn to tolerate and accept various emotional experiences with an eye toward building a child's greater capacity for emotional regulation and expression. But in truth, this book is more of a text about the different situations and scenarios that arise in child work, as Barish talks about working with a range of children and families in treatment.
Barish begins the book by laying his theoretical groundwork. His basic thesis is that child psychopathology “stems from a persistence of negative emotions—and the complex transformations of these emotions—in the mind of a child.” For Barish, it is the lingering impact of negative experiences and emotions, as they conn