Roberto
Carlo Russo
Il senso dell'azione in psicoterapia infantile
The meaning of action in child psychotherapy
Individual therapy and support of the environment
Scheda
Libro
Presentation
of the book
The book deals with the relational problems of children through a global intervention.
This approach goes through three closely connected interventions (each still
maintaining their own work modality): psychotherapy, parental support and
cooperation with school and educational structures. The text refers to the
dynamics relative to child development during the evolutionary process and
to the complex play of factors weaving the tissue within which this young
individual grows up. Among these aspects, of primary importance are the knowledge
of the child history, of its needs, personal and family events, characteristics
of the parental and social models within which the child is placed. These
elements are essential to understand the progressive structuring of the pathological
process. The possibility of integrating the three areas mentioned above facilitates
a therapeutic progression which is adequate to the reality in which the child
is the bearer of a problem which at times is just the symptom of a malaise
belonging to the family or to social life. Psychotherapy, familiar and educational
support need moments of comparison and adaptation to the new objectives which
arise during the child journey.
The work of parental support and counselling, the collaboration with school
operators presupposes as primary objective that of helping the comprehension
and the formulation of the child’s problems. These interventions have
to presuppose a community of intents that aims to bring out communication
problems between the parts, to avoid guilty isolation of parents and to strengthen
the necessary alliance among the parts. This networking is to have a positive
influence on the life of the child. In this theoretical-practical framework
the child is the primary focus and psychotherapy is the instrument helping
the reconstruction of a healthy psycho-affective development and supporting
the relational world of the minor. The psychotherapeutic approach applies
to the person in all its aspects (affective, motor, cognitive, relational),
with a special attention to the dynamics interacting among lived experiences,
motivations and child potential. This working mode breaks with the classic
psychotherapeutic models and uses a new mediator in the relationship between
the child and the therapist: the acting-in, a game for two, a transitional
area where the therapist accompanies the child in actions and language along
a path of self-reconstruction.
The approach of child psychotherapy is directed to the “Person”
as a whole and particularly to the interactive dynamics of lived experiences,
motives and potentialities. The alliance with the child takes place in the
respect and acceptance of the identity of the person and of its characteristics
and it favours the creation of a “safe base” with the therapist.
The therapeutic mediator is the playful activity which facilitates the emerging
of the child’s lived experiences through symbolic play, phantasmatic
productions and the imaginary. The therapeutic path focuses on the need for
the child to live problems concretely together with the therapist in order
to let the psychodynamic meaning of problems emerge with their relative elaboration.
For the child it’s the beginning of a new path which will favour the
discovery of its own capacity to elaborate dynamics and to re-live them concretely
together with the therapist. For the child, the fact of living a different
adaptation to the situation at hand has a strong evolutionary meaning because
during childhood it is through actions that favourable regressions can take
place. In turn, these regressions can bring about a positive re-elaboration
of the organisation of the self. Elaboration and evolution taking place through
actions can set out new psychic traces that form the base for a transition
from the pre-symbolic to the symbolic and from there to thought. The evolution
of therapy is progressively stimulated toward the process of autonomy, the
strengthening of trust of the Self, the conquest of sociability, by respecting
the potential and needs of the child. The therapist is the person who accompanies
the child in the new evolutionary process and who facilitates the evolutionary
steps through play, imagination, drawings, telling about oneself and phantasmatic
productions.
The correlation with the system environment-child is fundamental to know how dynamics and child behaviour work within the family and socially and to understand the evolution of therapeutic sessions. This aim is reached through talks to support the parents and to solve dynamics that disturb the relation to the child and to provide useful information to facilitate an adequate educative process. In many cases it will be necessary to collaborate with teachers and other people who look after the child. The intervention on parents and socio-educational structures will have to be carried out by an operator other than the therapist, with whom periodical meetings will take place in order to exchange information and coordinate common evolutionary objectives.