Treating Troubled Children and Their Families

by Ellen F. Wachtel

Integrating systemic, psychodynamic, and cognitive-behavioral perspectives, this acclaimed book presents an innovative framework for therapeutic work. Ellen Wachtel shows how parents and children all too often get entangled in patterns that cause grief to both generations, and demonstrates how to help bring about change with a combination of family-focused and child-focused interventions. Vivid case examples illustrate creative ways to engage young children in family sessions and conduct complementary sessions with children and parents alone, using a variety of strengths-based, developmentally informed strategies. The paperback edition features a new preface in which the author reflects on the continuing evolution of her approach.

Genres: Psychology, Childrens, Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published May 20, 1994

Reviews

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book hoping for some useful tips. After a few pages I grabbed a highlighter. I then discovered that I was blocking out the vast majority of the text in florescent colors. I decided that upon finishing this book I would sit down and review it again, typing up notes. It was that good.

My graduate coursework was largely taught from a psychodynamic point of view, by many professors who were orthodox Freudians. When I got out into my field placements I discovered that I was expected to work cognitive-behaviorally; I could think psychodynamically if I wanted to but interventions were clearly meant to be cognitive and/or behavioral. After some confused experiences I ended up in a post-doctoral placement where the orientation was strictly family systems, a perspective that was relatively new to me. At this point I'm never really sure what to say when people ask me what my orientation is.

Enter this book, which integrates psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and family systems approaches to maximize the therapist's ability to address children's difficulties. Rather than applying one of these approaches in isolation, Wachtel takes what's useful about each of them and creates a braided approach. Wachtel agrees with the family systems therapists who say that a child's difficulties should not be isolated from their context and the possible function they may be serving within the family system. But, Wachtel cautions, one must not apply the family systems approach so rigidly as to overlook individual concerns within the child. Rather than insisting on seeing the entire family for every single session, Wachtel suggests a combination of individual child sessions, parent sessions, and family sessions. Wachtel also notes that although it's useful to be attuned to psychodynamic defenses being employed by the child, parents (and children as well) appreciate and benefit from concrete cognitive and behavioral interventions that directly address the issues in an immediate and clearly valid fashion.

This is a book I suspect I will be returning to again and again. Highly recommended for therapists working with children and families.

[Sarah Hubbard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful guidebook when treating challenging families.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic! What a clear, well-written book on how to integrate systemic and psychodynamic conceptualizations of children and their families in order to create tailor-made, effective and integrative interventions.

[Fishface · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was only OK, not great. Too theorectical, not enough practical approaches.