Margo and Me. II. The role of narrative building in child analytic technique

Practicing child and adolescent psychoanalysis requires an understanding of the interdependence of analytic and developmental processes. Child analysts work with children whose organizing and regulating systems are still developing, allowing the analyst and her patient to tap the child's transformational potential as new hierarchies evolve and consolidate in the course of an analysis. The use of the narrative building technique is helpful to that process and is informed by and makes clinically applicable recent research data in development and therapeutic process. Narrative building can help the child develop phase specific organization that has been impeded by conflictual and non-conflictual elements in the child's inner and outer world, promote the developmental process, provide more flexible regulatory systems for emotional and cognitive development, lead to innovative views of people and relationships, and facilitate the organization of emerging structures necessary for progressive development.