Resistance and countertransference in child and adolescent psychotherapy

Countertransference brings to light the influence of both anxiety and family processes on the child's or adolescent's maturation and character development. The significance of developmental, dynamic, and family-interpersonal factors have all been stressed as part of the latent communication inherent in resistance. Family influences on resistance and countertransference have to be the subject of analytic scrutiny. The engagement of children and adolescents in the therapeutic process seriously threatens parents' defensive operations both as couples and as individuals. Countertransference responses afford the opportunity not only to clarify the meaning of resistances but also to pinpoint anxieties that have been reexperienced by the child or adolescent with the analyst at points of threat and disorganization. The twofold therapeutic task with children and adolescents consists of delineating and counteracting the family's negative impact on the child's development and self, in addition to addressing the children's contribution to their own pathological traits and immaturities. Countertransference anxiety confirms the dynamic and family implications of the analyst's participation with the patient. Countertransference resistance suggests the analyst's lack of openness in investigating how the treatment has evoked the child's anxiety, the parent's anxiety, and the analyst's anxiety. Resistance-transference-countertransference exchanges reveal the child's or adolescent's efforts to move towards health while emerging from the internalized family.