This book utilizes the unique opportunity to observe psychotherapy at two very different times in patients’ and therapists’ lives, when former child patients return to the same therapist years later as adults.
The book examines salient features of the patient-therapist relationship: what has changed and what remained the same. The clinical cases presented describe palpable shifts in the interpersonal field. How was it different during the adult encounter? How have the patient and therapist each contributed to these changes? From an interpersonal/relational perspective, therapists describe the actual “feel” of the child treatment relationship and how that “feel” has changed in the adult treatment years later. Equally central, the case presentations describe how each adult treatment utilized its prior child treatment as a cornerstone of the adult therapy: what the therapist and patient remembered about the child treatment, about each other, and how that early treatment was associated to and explored by the participants during the adult treatment.
With rich clinical detail, this book is key reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, as well as anyone wanting to understand better how childhood experiences shape our adult lives.