Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy

'Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy is a practical book. It is also a personal book: "My aim is not to suggest how child psychotherapy should be practised - this would be absurd. In this field no one has all the answers. You only have to see children and adolescents for a short time to realise how difficult it is to know what is really going on. Rather, by describing the way I work, readers will hear what I have done, what has worked and not worked for me over 36 years."- Peter Blake'An original and exciting description of child psychotherapy at its best and a masterly contribution to the literature.'- Anne Alvarez, psychotherapist, author of Live Company: Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy with Autistic, Borderline, Deprived and Abused Children 'A highly informative, refreshing work that should appeal to beginners seeking a model of therapeutic work with children to draw from, in addition to experienced child psychotherapists keen to reflect on their own practice with children and adolescents. It achieves its aim of seeking to make the practice of child and adolescent psychotherapy more transparent.'- Marita Lowry, Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia, from a review published in Psychotherapy in Australia, February 2009

Peter Blake is a clinical psychologist and Tavistock-trained child psychotherapist. He has thirty-six years of experience in working in the area of child and family mental health, in England and Australia. Peter is currently Director of the Institute of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, a professional body that offers training in child and adolescent psychotherapy in Sydney. Peter also works in private practice in Sydney.

Dedication -- Introduction -- Foundations -- The analytic legacy -- Conceptual framework -- Psychoanalytic observation -- Assessment -- Referral and initial interview -- Individual assessment -- Developmental considerations -- Assessment for therapy -- Working with parents -- Therapy -- The setting, physical and mental, and limits -- Interpretation -- The role of play -- The challenges of play -- Transference and countertransference -- Interpretation, play, and transference and countertransference in practice: Paul's story -- Adolescents -- Endings -- Conclusion