Psychoanalytic treatment of children and adolescents

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy has had extensive application to a wide range of disorders in adolescents and children of different ages over the past 50 years. Psychoanalytic theory places particular emphasis on the meaning and function of symptomatic behavior in establishing internal equilibrium and adaptation to the environment. Children of different ages bring to treatment a variety of developmental issues and conflicts consistent with their stage of development. Case reports of psychoanalytic treatment serve as pieces of clinical research for preschoolers, latency age children, and adolescents. In children with physical/metabolic disorders, the child's physical disability becomes a ready foci for neurotic symptom formation requiring special therapeutic management. The special processes and tools of transference, resistance, interpretation, defense analysis, and working-through give the psychotherapist the necessary means to resolve deeply entrenched neurotic patterns.