Sergio V. Delgado - Böcker

Clinicians often have difficulty helping the parents of youth with emotional and behavioral difficulties and fail to recognize that often it is the youth’s cognitive and learning weaknesses that drive their maladaptive behaviors.

The fields of psychiatry and child psychiatry are encumbered by numerous and complex relational, medicolegal, and ethical dilemmas. This practical and clinically relevant book attempts to bring clarity to complex clinical presentations through the integration of psychodynamic, family systems, medicolegal, and ethical perspectives. It recognizes that the intimate and often difficult work with such complex cases requires consultation with multidimensional experts to address psychodynamic, family, ethical, and therapeutic issues. In the process, the author aims to foster the comfort and skill in dealing with these cases that is essential to the personal and professional growth of the psychiatrist. It is further anticipated that the book will assist in developing best practice standards for assessment and intervention in cases of this nature.

Contemporary psychodynamic theory profoundly impacts our understanding of the development of psychopathology in children and adolescents. This book creates new concepts derived from contemporary psychodynamic theory that necessitate a revision to the principles underlying our understanding of and approach to young patients in psychotherapy. Moreover, this book reviews recent contributions from contemporary two-person relational psychodynamic theory and makes use of detailed case examples to bring to life this theory’s practical applications in child and adolescent psychotherapy. Psychotherapists and students of psychotherapy will find this book a valuable source of information on contemporary psychodynamic theory and a useful resource for introducing a contemporary style into their practice, co-constructing with the patient a narrative to achieve the desired goals.