As a child psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, and co-chair of the Northern American Committee on Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis (COCAP) of the IPA, I constantly try to evaluate and compare the value of many types of child treatment modalities including child psychoanalysis. Demonstrating the relevance and clinical indications of child analysis for the emotional disorders of childhood is a crucial goal for our profession. My hope is to create a significant appeal to individuals inside and outside of psychoanalytic organizations and child psychoanalytic training centers.
Child and adolescent psychoanalysts are able and well equipped to find effective ways of presenting and promoting child psychoanalysis, locally, nationally and internationally. For a broader propagation of child analysis, we need to actively participate in outreach programs and increase visibility by speaking out on important social issues in order to facilitate its promotion and improve public education.
To advance child psychoanalysis, Kerry Kelly Novick, chair of the IPA's COCAP, communicates regularly with Gerard Lucas from Europe, Jose Sahovaler from Latin America and me from North America to implement our ideas to promote child analysis.
COCAP's mandate is to make people inside and outside the psychoanalytic organizations more aware of child and adolescent psychoanalysis, monitor training programs, participate in outreach and public education efforts, and work with other groups within and outside of the IPA to meet the needs of children and adolescents, and their parents.
One example of such effort occurred last January at APsaA's Child Congress meeting in New York City, when Novick emphasized the importance of an active presence of information and materials about child analysis on APsaA's website, for children ages 0-24. This could be brought forward on the front page of the APsaA website and have links with the IPA and Association of Child Psychoanalysis websites as well as all the related organizations, such as the Alliance for Psychoanalytic Schools and American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Additionally, the entire child training programs should be listed with user-friendly, well-developed links on their websites.
The successes and ongoing work of COCAP have largely been accomplished in collaboration with other committees, both nationally and internationally. Progress has been made in collecting materials for the child and adolescent page of the websites.
The ongoing work of COCAP in association with the IPA Integrated Training Committee has resulted in draft model curriculum guidelines.
The Hayman Prize to be presented in the next year addresses the effects of traumatic experience on young people. The submissions have been adjudicated and a recommendation for the award has been made.
Our efforts in North America, to generate video material to publicize child analysis have not yet come to fruition. The problem is the lack of security about online public format. European colleagues are working on their own initiatives for this project, as are Latin Americans. Alternative solutions and ideas are being considered.
As COCAP/IPA chair, Kerry Novick led an international “Child abuse definitions” subgroup in preparation for the Boston IPA Congress held in July. COCAP plays an important role in educative, advocacy, prevention and intervention functions relating to child abuse. There was an attempt to address the child abuse phenomena and its problems from multiple perspectives, at different levels, and promoting a psychoanalytic voice in the larger global/social environments. At a one-day pre-congress meeting, COCAP held Inter-committee Work Groups on Child Abuse where six joint committees presented social issues position statements. Francis Thomson-Salo and I chaired the International Committee on Child Abuse prevention in Boston. The meeting was very successful and we formed a task force for our future work.
Mali Mann, M.D., is on the faculty of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, serving as training and supervising psychoanalyst, and is a child analytic supervisor. She is also adjunct clinical professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University.