Tag: Psychotherapy

Book: An Introduction to Counselling and Psychotherapy: From Theory to Practice

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Book Title:

An Introduction to Counselling and Psychotherapy: From Theory to Practice.

Author(s): Andrew Reeves.

Year: 2018.

Edition: Second (2nd), Updated Edition.

Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Type(s): Hardcover, Paperback and Kindle.

Synopsis:

This book introduces readers to everything they need to know about counselling and psychotherapy theory, skills and practice. Drawing on years of experience as a counselling practitioner and educator, Andrew Reeves links theory to the development of appropriate skills and locates it within the context of therapeutic practice. Features including chapter summaries, discussion questions, prompts for reflection, case examples and further reading help students to apply what they’ve learnt and give them the confidence to progress into practice. The book covers:

  • Key theoretical approaches.
  • Personal development.
  • Counselling skills.
  • Professional settings.
  • Law, policy, values and ethics.
  • Working with difference and diversity.
  • Client and present issues, and more.

Learning is also supported by a wealth of online resources such as case studies and videos that show what theory looks like in practice, as well as journal articles to help extend knowledge. This is the essential text for any trainee practitioner, or for anyone needing an introduction to the foundations of counselling theory and practice.

On This Day … 02 August

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People (Deaths)

Paul Goodman

Paul Goodman (1911-1972) was an American author and public intellectual best known for his 1960s works of social criticism. Born to a Jewish family in New York City, Goodman was raised by his aunts and sister and attended City College of New York.

As an aspiring writer, he wrote and published poems and fiction before attending graduate school in Chicago. He returned to writing in New York City and took sporadic magazine writing and teaching jobs, many of which he lost for his outward bisexuality and World War II draft resistance. Goodman discovered anarchism and wrote for libertarian journals. He became one of the founders of gestalt therapy and took patients through the 1950s while continuing to write prolifically.

His 1960 book of social criticism, Growing Up Absurd, established his importance as a mainstream cultural theorist. Goodman became known as “the philosopher of the New Left” and his anarchistic disposition was influential in 1960s counterculture and the free school movement. His celebrity did not endure far beyond his life, but Goodman is remembered for his principles, outré proposals, and vision of human potential.

What is Countertransference?

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Introduction

Countertransference is defined as redirection of a psychotherapist‘s feelings toward a client – or, more generally, as a therapist’s emotional entanglement with a client.

Refer to Transference and Body-Centred Countertransference.

Early Formulations

The phenomenon of countertransference (German: Gegenübertragung) was first defined publicly by Sigmund Freud in 1910 (The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy) as being “a result of the patient’s influence on [the physician’s] unconscious feelings”; although Freud had been aware of it privately for some time, writing to Carl Jung for example in 1909 of the need “to dominate ‘counter-transference’, which is after all a permanent problem for us”. Freud stated that since an analyst is a human himself he can easily let his emotions into the client. Because Freud saw the countertransference as a purely personal problem for the analyst, he rarely referred to it publicly, and did so almost invariably in terms of a “warning against any countertransference lying in wait” for the analyst, who “must recognize this countertransference in himself and master it”. However, analysis of Freud’s letters shows that he was intrigued by countertransference and did not see it as purely a problem.

The potential danger of the analyst’s countertransference – “In such cases, the patient represents for the analyst an object of the past on to whom past feelings and wishes are projected” – became widely accepted in psychodynamic circles, both within and without the psychoanalytic mainstream. Thus, for example, Jung warned against “cases of counter-transference when the analyst really cannot let go of the patient…both fall into the same dark hole of unconsciousness”. Similarly Eric Berne stressed that “Countertransference means that not only does the analyst play a role in the patient’s script, but she plays a part in his…the result is the ‘chaotic situation’ which analysts speak of”. Lacan acknowledged of the analyst’s “countertransference…if he is re-animated the game will proceed without anyone knowing who is leading”.

In this sense, the term includes unconscious reactions to a patient that are determined by the psychoanalyst’s own life history and unconscious content; it was later expanded to include unconscious hostile and/or erotic feelings toward a patient that interfere with objectivity and limit the therapist’s effectiveness. For example, a therapist might have a strong desire for a client to get good grades in university because the client reminds her of her children at that stage in life, and the anxieties that the therapist experienced during that time. Even in its most benign form, such an attitude could lead at best to “a ‘countertransference cure’…achieved through compliance and a ‘false self’ suppression of the patient’s more difficult feelings”.

Another example would be a therapist who did not receive enough attention from her father perceiving her client as being too distant and resenting him for it. In essence, this describes the transference of the treater to the patient, which is referred to as the “narrow perspective”.

Middle Years

As the 20th century progressed, however, other, more positive views of countertransference began to emerge, approaching a definition of countertransference as the entire body of feelings that the therapist has toward the patient. Jung explored the importance of the therapist’s reaction to the patient through the image of the wounded physician: “it is his own hurt that gives the measure of his power to heal”. Heinrich Racker emphasised the threat that “the repression of countertransference…is prolonged in the mythology of the analytic situation”. Paula Heimann highlighted how the “analyst’s countertransference is not only part and parcel of the analytic relationship, but it is the patient’s creation, it is part of the patient’s personality”. As a result, “counter-transference was thus reversed from being an interference to becoming a potential source of vital confirmation”. The change of fortune “was highly controversial. Melanie Klein disapproved on the grounds that poorly analysed psycho-analysts could excuse their own emotional difficulties” thereby; but among her younger followers “the trend within the Kleinian group was to take seriously the new view of counter-transference” – Hanna Segal warning in typically pragmatic fashion however that “Countertransference can be the best of servants but is the most awful of masters”.

Late Twentieth-Century Paradigm

By the last third of the century, a growing consensus appeared on the importance of “a distinction between ‘personal countertransference’ (which has to do with the therapist) and ‘diagnostic response’ – that indicates something about the patient…diagnostic countertransference”. A new belief had come into being that “countertransference can be of such enormous clinical usefulness….You have to distinguish between what your reactions to the patient are telling you about his psychology and what they are merely expressing about your own”. A distinction between “neurotic countertransference” (or “illusory countertransference”) and “countertransference proper” had come (despite a wide range of terminological variation) to transcend individual schools. The main exception is that for “most psychoanalysts who follow Lacan’s teaching…counter-transference is not simply one form of resistance, it is the ultimate resistance of the analyst”.

The contemporary understanding of countertransference is thus generally to regard countertransference as a “jointly created” phenomenon between the treater and the patient. The patient pressures the treater through transference into playing a role congruent with the patient’s internal world. However, the specific dimensions of that role are coloured by treater’s own personality. Countertransference can be a therapeutic tool when examined by the treater to sort out who is doing what, and the meaning behind those interpersonal roles (The differentiation of the object’s interpersonal world between self and other). Nothing in the new understanding alters of course the need for continuing awareness of the dangers in the narrow perspective – of “serious risks of unresolved countertransference difficulties being acted out within what is meant to be a therapeutic relationship”; but “from that point on, transference and counter-transference were looked upon as an inseparable couple…’total situation'”.

Twenty-First-Century Developments

Further developments in the current century might be said to be the increased recognition that “Most countertransference reactions are a blend of the two aspects”, personal and diagnostic, which require careful disentanglement in their interaction; and the possibility that nowadays psychodynamic counsellors use countertransference much more than transference – “another interesting shift in perspective over the years”. One explanation of the latter point might be that because “in object relations therapy…the relationship is so central, ‘countertransference’ reactions are considered key in helping the therapist to understand the transference”, something appearing in “the post-Kleinian perspective…[as] Indivisible transferencecountertransference”.

Body-Centred Countertransference

Psychologists at NUI Galway and University College Dublin have recently begun to measure body-centred countertransference in female trauma therapists using their recently developed “Egan and Carr Body Centred Countertransference Scale”, a sixteen symptom measure. High levels of body-centred countertransference have since been found in both Irish female trauma therapists and clinical psychologists. This phenomenon is also known as “somatic countertransference” or “embodied countertransference” and links to mirror neurons and automatic somatic empathy for others due to the actions of these neurons have been hypothesised.

On This Day … 02 July

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People (Deaths)

  • 1926 – Émile Coué, French psychologist and pharmacist (b. 1857).

Emile Coue

Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie (26 February 1857 to 02 July 1926) was a French psychologist and pharmacist who introduced a popular method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion. Considered by Charles Baudouin to represent a second Nancy School, Coué treated many patients in groups and free of charge.

What is a School Psychological Examiner?

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Introduction

In the United States education system, School Psychological Examiners assess the needs of students in schools for special education services or other interventions.

The post requires a relevant postgraduate qualification and specialist training. This role is distinct within school psychology from that of the psychiatrist, clinical psychologist and psychometrist.

Role of Psychological Examiners in Schools

School Psychological Examiners are assessors licensed by a State Department of Education to work with students from pre-kindergarten to twelfth grade in public schools, interviewing, observing, and administering and interpreting standardised testing instruments that measure cognitive and academic abilities, or describe behaviour, personality characteristics, attitude or aptitude, in order to determine eligibility for special education services, placement, or conduct re-evaluation, or occupational guidance and planning.

The work of the School Psychological Examiners is both qualitative and quantitative in nature. They prepare psychoeducational evaluation reports based on test results and interpretation. Integrated with case history, the evaluation reports should present an accurate and clear profile of a student’s level of functioning or disability, strengths and weaknesses, compare test results with the standards of the evaluation instruments, analyse potential test biases, and develop appropriate recommendations to help direct educational interventions and services in a most inclusive and least restrictive environment. Evaluation reports are framed by laws and regulations applicable to testing and assessment in special education, and must follow school district policies and the codes of ethics applicable to education, special education, and psychological assessment.

School Psychological Examiners also provide psychoeducational interventions such as consultation services, collaboration in behaviour management planning and monitoring, and devising social skills training programmes in public schools.

Unless additionally trained and licensed, School Psychological Examiners do not offer or provide psychotherapy or clinical diagnostic/treatment services, which are attributions of licensed psychiatrists and clinical psychologists, as provided by law and professional regulations.

Qualifications

School Psychological Examiners are highly trained and experienced educators who hold a master’s or higher degree in education or school counselling and at least one endorsement in special education. In addition to school district policies, School Psychological Examiners are bound by professional regulations, as well as by the ethical codes of testing and measurement. Other designations for School Psychological Examiners include ‘Educational Examiners’ or ‘Psychoeducational Examiners.’ Designation of this specialty varies among different school districts.

‘Psychometrist,’ from the term psychometrics, is an occupational designation not inclusive of the broader faculties of School Psychological Examiners. Psychometrists deal exclusively with quantitative test administration, do not require coursework beyond the bachelor’s level, or licensure by a state department of education. Training of psychometrists is primarily done on-the-job, and their services are valuable in mental health community agencies, assessment and institutional research, or test-producing companies, etc., rather than in K-12 schools.

Graduate Training and Licensure of School Psychological Examiners

Typical training includes coursework beyond the Master of Education, Master of Science in Education, or Master of Arts in Teaching degrees. Currently, School Psychological Examiners complete the courses required by their state department of education rather than by a prescribed self-contained programme of studies. The coursework is equivalent to an entire Specialist or Doctoral Degree; unfortunately just a handful of institutions of higher education offer this kind of self-standing graduate programme. Graduate courses of a psychological nature include:

  • Special Education Law.
  • Advanced Child and Adolescent Growth and Development.
  • Psychology of Students with Exceptionalities.
  • Abnormal Child and Adult Psychology.
  • Advanced Statistics and Research in Education and Psychology.
  • Tests and measurements.
  • Assessment and Evaluation of the Individual.
  • Individual Intelligence quotient.
  • Group Assessment.
  • Diagnostics and Remedial Reading.
  • Ethical issues in education and psychological measurement and evaluation reporting.
  • Methods of Instructing Students with Mild/Moderate Disabilities.
  • Methods of Instructing Students with Severe to Profound Disabilities.
  • Survey of Guidance and Counselling Techniques.
  • Practicum for School Psychological Examiners (150 supervised contact hours).

Licensure as School Psychological Examiner demands experience in a special education or school counselling setting, satisfactory completion of the required graduate coursework and practicum, plus a passing score on the ‘Praxis II Special Education: Knowledge-Based Core Principles’. Graduate school recommendation and verification of experience by the employing school district complete the requirements. In addition to the practicum, on-the-job mentoring supervision for at least two school years, sometimes four years, allows the transition from initial licensure to standard professional licensure. An annual professional development plan and ongoing performance-based evaluation ensure ‘High Quality’ professionalism as required by the No Child Left Behind law and related regulations.

Competencies

The clinical and technical skills needed to be a competent behavioural and clinical assessor include the abilities to do the following (Sattler & Hoge, 2006):

  • Establish and maintain rapport with children, parents, and teachers.
  • Use effective assessment techniques appropriate for evaluating children’s behaviour.
  • Use effective techniques for obtaining accurate and complete information from parents and teachers.
  • Evaluate the psychometric properties of tests and other measures.
  • Select an appropriate assessment battery.
  • Administer and score tests and other assessment tools by following standardised procedures.
  • Observe and evaluate behaviour objectively.
  • Perform informal assessments.
  • Interpret assessment results.
  • Use assessment findings to develop effective interventions.
  • Communicate assessment findings effectively, both orally and in writing.
  • Adhere to ethical standards.
  • Read and interpret research in behavioural and clinical assessment.
  • Keep up with laws and regulations concerning the assessment and placement of children with special needs.

Additionally, high quality School Psychological Examiners exhibit proficiency-level knowledge on:

  • The provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Act and the Section 504 of the Civil Rights Act and related legislation.
  • State and federal laws, and all the applicable regulations, policies, and standards pertaining the provision of psychosocial and educational services to disabled individuals.
  • Children and adolescents’ advanced development and behaviour.
  • Multicultural factors in attitudes and behaviours.
  • Analysis and diagnosis of learning problems including special consideration of low incidence populations.
  • Integration of knowledge, facts, and theory on classroom environment, psychosocial principles, and test results, to plan for prescriptive instruction, management, and education of students with special needs.
  • Focused and methodical psychoeducational evaluation reporting, providing sound and accurate information and research-based remediation recommendations to improve individual student’s learning, achievement, and behavioural performance.
  • Teamwork and collaboration for the process of staffing with other school professionals and collaborative development of instructional strategies for students with special needs.
  • Provision of assistance with instructional modifications or accommodations, and programming or transition recommendations for the Individualised Education Programme (IEP).
  • Accountability for the monitoring and outcome assessment of services and interventions.

Evaluation Standards

Evaluation standards provide guidelines for designing, implementing, assessing, and reporting the psychoeducational evaluation reported by school psychological examiners. The evaluation is informed by professional codes of ethics.

  • Standards for Qualifications of Test Users.
  • Code of Fair Testing Practices in Education.
  • Standards for Multicultural Assessment.
  • Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing.

Reference

Sattler, J. M. & Hoge, R. D. (2006). Assessment of Children: Behavioral, Social, and Clinical Foundations. 5th Ed. San Diego, CA: Jerome M. Sattler Publisher, Inc. p.2.

What is Dissaffection?

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Introduction

The term disaffectation was coined by noted French psychoanalyst Joyce McDougall as a strictly psychoanalytic term for alexithymia, a neurological condition characterised by severe lack of emotional awareness.

Background

McDougall felt that alexithymia had become too strongly classified as a neuroanatomical defect and concretised as an intractable illness leaving little room for a purely psychoanalytic explanation for this phenomenon.

In coining the term McDougall hoped to indicate the behaviour of people who had experienced overwhelming emotion that threatened to attack their sense of integrity and identity. Such individuals, unable to repress the ideas linked to emotional pain and equally unable to project these feelings delusively onto representations of other people, simply ejected them from consciousness by “pulverizing all trace of feeling, so that an experience which has caused emotional flooding is not recognized as such and therefore cannot be contemplated”. They were not suffering from an inability to experience or express emotion, but from “an inability to contain and reflect over an excess of affective experience.”

‘Disaffectation’ conveys a deliberate double meaning. The Latin prefix dis-, indicates separation or loss and suggests, metaphorically, that certain people are psychologically separated from their emotions and may have “lost” the capacity to be in touch with interior psychic reality. Also included in this prefix is the secondary meaning from the Greek dys- with its implication of illness.

According to Professor of Psychiatry of the University of Toronto, Graeme Taylor, this psychoanalytic conceptualisation departs from older, less applicable theories which emphasized the role of unconscious neurotic conflicts, and instead facilitates a psychoanalytic model of physical illness and disease based on the operation of primitive pre-neurotic pathology that has failed to achieve psychic representation. Henry Krystal Professor of Psychiatry at Michigan State University agreed, adding that it is useful to separate the consideration of psychotherapy for the “disaffected” individual from that of the classical psychosomatic neuroses. To Krystal this consideration is important because “since these patients may develop serious, even occasionally fatal exacerbations of illness during psychotherapy, treating them with psychotherapy for psychosomatic illness is not indicated”. This distinction has allowed the field of psychoanalysis to contribute constructively to the field of psychosomatic medicine.

What is Depressive Disorder Not Otherwise Specified?

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Introduction

Depressive Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (DD-NOS) is designated by the code 311 in the DSM-IV for depressive disorders that are impairing but do not fit any of the officially specified diagnoses. According to the DSM-IV, DD-NOS encompasses “any depressive disorder that does not meet the criteria for a specific disorder.” In the DSM-5, it is called unspecified depressive disorder.

Refer to Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (DDNOS).

Background

Examples of disorders in this category include those sometimes described as minor depressive disorder and recurrent brief depression.

“Depression” refers to a spectrum of disturbances in mood that vary from mild to severe and from short periods to constant illness. DD-NOS is diagnosed if a patients symptoms fail to meet the criteria more common depressive disorders such as major depressive disorder or dysthymia. Although DD-NOS shares similar symptoms to dysthymia, dysthymia is classified by a period of at least 2 years of constantly recurring depressed mood, where as DD-NOS is classified by much shorter periods of depressed moods.

For most people who suffer the condition, their life will be significantly affected. DD-NOS can make many aspects of a person’s daily life difficult to manage, inhibiting their ability to enjoy the things that used to make them happy. Sufferers of the disorder tend to isolate themselves from their friends and families, lose interest in some activities, and experience behavioural changes and sleeping disorders. Some sufferers also experience suicidal tendencies or suicide attempts. In addition to having these symptoms, a diagnosis of DD-NOS will only be made if the symptoms cause significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. For the diagnosis to be accurate, a psychiatrist is required to spend extensive time with the patient.

Symptoms of the disorder may arise due to several reasons. These include:

  • Distress due to medical conditions.
  • Environmental effects and situations.

However, the effects of drugs or medication or bereavement are not classified under the diagnosis.

A person will not be diagnosed with the condition if they have or have had any of the following: a major depressive episode, manic episode, mixed episode or hypomanic episode.

A diagnosis of the disorder will look like: “Depressive Disorder NOS 311”.

Concerns

Accurately assessing for a specific Depressive Disorder diagnosis requires an expenditure of time that is deemed unreasonable for most primary care physicians. For this reason, physicians often use this code as a proxy for a more thorough diagnosis. There is concern that this may lead to a “wastebasket” mindset for certain disorders. In addition reimbursement through Medicare may be lower for certain non specific diagnosis.

Treatment

It is possible for this disorder to progress over time. A patient suffering from the disorder can improve the condition with treatments. There are several types of therapies that may improve the condition, but depending on a patient’s experience of the disorder or the cause of the disorder, treatments will vary.

  • Psychotherapy including behaviour therapy, Gestalt therapy, Adlerian therapy, psychoanalytic therapy and existential therapy.
  • Pharmacotherapy through medications including antidepressants.

What is Transference Focused Psychotherapy?

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Introduction

Transference focused psychotherapy (TFP) is a highly structured, twice-weekly modified psychodynamic treatment based on Otto F. Kernberg’s object relations model of borderline personality disorder.

It views the individual with borderline personality organisation (BPO) as holding unreconciled and contradictory internalised representations of self and significant others that are affectively charged. The defence against these contradictory internalised object relations leads to disturbed relationships with others and with self. The distorted perceptions of self, others, and associated affects are the focus of treatment as they emerge in the relationship with the therapist (transference). The treatment focuses on the integration of split off parts of self and object representations, and the consistent interpretation of these distorted perceptions is considered the mechanism of change.

TFP has been validated as an efficacious treatment for borderline personality disorder (BPD), though too few studies have been conducted to allow firm conclusions about its value. TFP is one of a number of treatments that may be useful in the treatment of BPD; however, in a study which compared TFP, dialectical behaviour therapy, and modified psychodynamic supportive psychotherapy, only TFP was shown to change how patients think about themselves in relationships.

Borderline Personality Disorder

TFP is a treatment for borderline personality disorder (BPD). Patients with BPD are often characterised by intense affects, stormy relationships, and impulsive behaviours. Due to their high reactivity to environmental stimuli, patients with BPD often experience dramatic and short-lived shifts in their mood, alternating between experiences of euphoria, depression, anxiety, and nervousness. Patients with BPD often experience intolerable feelings of emptiness that they attempt to fill with impulsive and self-damaging behaviours, such as substance abuse, risky sexual behaviour, uncontrolled spending, or binge eating. Further, patients with BPD often exhibit recurrent suicidal behaviours, gestures, or threats. Under intense stress patients with BPD may exhibit transient dissociative or paranoid symptoms.

Theoretical Model of Borderline Personality

According to an object relations model, in normal psychological development mental templates of oneself in relation to others, or object representations, become increasingly more differentiated and integrated. The infant’s experience, initially organised around moments of pain (“I am uncomfortable and in need of someone to care for me”) and pleasure (“I am now being soothed by someone and feel loved”), become increasingly integrated and differentiated mental templates of oneself in relation to others. These increasingly mature representations allow for the realistic blending of good and bad, such that positive and negative qualities can be integrated into a complex, multifaceted representation of an individual (“Although she is not caring for me at this moment, I know she loves me and will do so in the future”). Such integrated representations allow for the tolerance of ambivalence, difference, and contradiction in oneself and others.

For Kernberg the degree of differentiation and integration of these representations of self and other, along with their affective valence, constitutes personality organisation. In a normal personality organisation the individual has an integrated model of self and others, allowing for stability and consistency within one’s identity and in the perception of others, as well as a capacity for becoming intimate with others while maintaining one’s sense of self. For example, such an individual would be able to tolerate hateful feelings in the context of a loving relationship without internal conflict or a sense of discontinuity in the perception of the other. In contrast, in Borderline Personality Organisation (BPO), the lack of integration in representations of self and other leads to the use of primitive defence mechanisms (e.g. splitting, projective identification, dissociation), identity diffusion (inconsistent view of self and others), and unstable reality testing (inconsistent differentiation between internal and external experience). Under conditions of high stress, borderline patients may fail to appreciate the “whole” of the situation and interpret events in catastrophic and intensely personal ways. They fail to discriminate the intentions and motivations of the other and thus, perceive only threat or rejection. Thus thoughts and feelings about self and others are split into dichotomous experiences of good or bad, black or white, all or nothing.

Goals

The major goals of TFP are to reduce suicidality and self-injurious behaviours, and to facilitate better behavioural control, increased affect regulation, more gratifying relationships, and the ability to pursue life goals. This is believed to be accomplished through the development of integrated representations of self and others, the modification of primitive defensive operations, and the resolution of identity diffusion that perpetuate the fragmentation of the patient’s internal representational world.

Treatment Procedure

Contract

The treatment begins with the development of the treatment contract, which consists of general guidelines that apply for all clients and of specific items developed from problem areas of the individual client that could interfere with the therapy progress. The contract also contains therapist responsibilities. The client and the therapist must agree to the content of the treatment contract before the therapy can proceed.

Therapeutic Process

TFP consists of the following three steps:

  • Diagnostic description of a particular internalised object relation in the transference.
  • Diagnostic elaboration of the corresponding self and object representation in the transference, and of their enactment in the transference/countertransference.
  • Integration of the split-off self representations, leading to an integrated sense of self and others which resolves identity diffusion.

During the first year of treatment, TFP focuses on a hierarchy of issues:

  • Containment of suicidal and self-destructive behaviours.
  • Various ways of destroying the treatments.
  • Identification and recapitulation of dominant object relational patterns (from unintegrated and undifferentiated affects and representations of self and others to a more coherent whole).

In this treatment, the analysis of the transference is the primary vehicle for the transformation of primitive (e.g. split, polarised) to advanced (e.g. complex, differentiated and integrated) object relations. Thus, in contrast to therapies that focus on the short-term treatment of symptoms, TFP has the ambitious goal of not just changing symptoms, but changing the personality organisation, which is the context of the symptoms. To do this, the client’s affectively charged internal representations of previous relationships are consistently interpreted as the therapist becomes aware of them in the therapeutic relationship, that is, the transference. Techniques of clarification, confrontation, and interpretation are used within the evolving transference relationship between the patient and the therapist.

In the psychotherapeutic relationship, self and object representations are activated in the transference. In the course of the therapy, projection and identification are operating, i.e. devalued self-representations are projected onto the therapist whilst the client identifies with a critical object representation. These processes are usually connected to affective experiences such as anger or fear.

The information that emerges within the transference provides direct access to the individual’s internal world for two reasons. First, it is observable by both therapist and patient simultaneously so that inconsistent perceptions of the shared reality can be discussed immediately. Second, the perceptions of shared reality are accompanied by affect whereas the discussion of historical material can have an intellectualised quality and be thus less informative.

TFP emphasizes the role of interpretation within psychotherapy sessions. As the split-off representations of self and other get played out in the course of the treatment, the therapist helps the patient to understand the reasons (the fears or the anxieties) that support the continued separation of these fragmented senses of self and other. This understanding is accompanied by the experience of strong affects within the therapeutic relationship. The integration of the split and polarized concepts of self and others leads to a more complex, differentiated, and realistic sense of self and others that allows for better modulation of affects and in turn clearer thinking. Therefore, as split-off representations become integrated, patients tend to experience an increased coherence of identity, relationships that are balanced and constant over time and therefore not at risk of being overwhelmed by aggressive affect, a greater capacity for intimacy, a reduction in self-destructive behaviours, and general improvement in functioning.

Mechanisms of Change

In TFP, hypothesised mechanisms of change derive from Kernberg’s developmentally based theory of Borderline Personality Organisation, conceptualised in terms of unintegrated and undifferentiated affects and representations of self and other. Partial representations of self and other are paired and linked by an affect in mental units called object relation dyads. These dyads are elements of psychological structure. In borderline pathology, the lack of integration of the internal object relations dyads corresponds to a ‘split’ psychological structure in which totally negative representations are split off/segregated from idealised positive representations of self and other (seeing people as all good or all bad). The putative global mechanism of change in patients treated with TFP is the integration of these polarised affect states and representations of self and other into a more coherent whole.

Empirical Support

Preliminary Research

In early research studying the efficacy of a year-long TFP, suicide attempts were significantly reduced during treatment. Additionally, the physical condition of the patients was significantly improved. When the researchers compared the treatment year to the year prior, it was found that there was a significant reduction in psychiatric hospitalisations and days spent as inpatients in psychiatric hospitals. The dropout rate for the 1-year study was 19.1%, which the authors state as comparable to dropout rates in previous studies assessing the treatment of borderline individuals, including DBT research.

TFP vs. Treatment-As-Usual (TAU)

Results indicated that the TFP group experienced significant decreases in ER visits and hospitalisations during treatment year, as well as significant increases in global functioning when compared to TAU.

TFP vs. Treatment by Community Experts

A randomised clinical trial compared the outcomes of TFP or treatment by community experts for 104 borderline patients. The dropout rate was significantly higher in the community psychotherapy condition; however, the dropout rate for TFP was 38.5%, which the authors acknowledge as somewhat higher than dropout rates associated with dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) and schema-focused therapy (SFT). The TFP group experienced significant improvement in personality organisation, psychosocial functioning, and number of suicide attempts. In this study neither group was associated with a significant change in self-harming behaviours.

TFP vs. DBT vs. Supportive Treatment

Prior to treatment and at four-month intervals during treatment, patients were assessed in the following domains: suicidal behaviour, aggression, impulsivity, anxiety, depression, and social adjustment. Results indicate that patients in all three conditions showed improvement in multiple domains at the one-year mark. Only DBT and TFP were significantly associated with improvement in suicidal behaviours; however, TFP outperformed DBT in anger and impulsivity improvement. Overall, participation in TFP predicted significant improvement in 10 of the 12 variables across the 6 domains, DBT in 5 of 12, and ST in 6 of the 12 variables.

TFP vs. Schema Focused Therapy

Significant improvements were found in both treatment groups on DSM-IV BPD criteria and on all four of the study’s outcome measures (borderline psychopathology, general psychopathology, quality of life, and TFP/SFT personality concepts) after 1-, 2-, and 3-years. Schema focused therapy (SFT, or schema therapy as it is now commonly known) was associated with a significantly higher retention rate. After three years of treatment, schema therapy patients showed greater increases in quality of life, and significantly more schema therapy patients recovered or showed clinical improvement on the BPD Severity Index, fourth version. However, the TFP cell contained more suicidal patients and showed less adherence casting doubt on a direct comparison between treatments. The schema therapy group improved significantly more than the TFP group with respect to relationships, impulsivity, and parasuicidal/suicidal behaviour although many of the alliance ratings were made after dropout. It was concluded that schema therapy was significantly more effective than TFP on all outcome measures assessed during the study. A follow-up of this study concluded that both clients and therapists rated therapeutic alliance higher in schema therapy than in TFP.

What is Child and Adolescent Psychiatry?

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Introduction

Child and adolescent psychiatry (or paediatric psychiatry) is a branch of psychiatry that focuses on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders in children, adolescents, and their families.

It investigates the biopsychosocial factors that influence the development and course of psychiatric disorders and treatment responses to various interventions. Child and adolescent psychiatrists primarily use psychotherapy and/or medication to treat mental disorders in the paediatric population.

Brief History

When psychiatrists and paediatricians first began to recognise and discuss childhood psychiatric disorders in the 19th century, they were largely influenced by literary works of the Victorian era. Authors like the Brontë sisters, George Eliot, and Charles Dickens, introduced new ways of thinking about the child mind and the potential influence early childhood experiences could have on child development and the subsequent adult mind. When the Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology, the first psychiatric journal in English, was published in 1848, child psychiatry didn’t exist as its own field yet. However, some of the earliest works on the possibility of nervous disorders and “insanity” in children were published in the Journal and several medical writers directly referenced works such as Jane Eyre (1847), Wuthering Heights (1847), Dombey and Son (1848), and David Copperfield (1850), to illustrate this new conceptualisation of the child mind. Until that time, it was generally accepted that children were free from nervous disorders and the “passions” that affected the adult mind.

As early as 1899, the term “child psychiatry” (in French) was used as a subtitle in Manheimer’s monograph Les Troubles Mentaux de l’Enfance. However, the Swiss psychiatrist Moritz Tramer (1882-1963) was probably the first to define the parameters of child psychiatry in terms of diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis within the discipline of medicine, in 1933. In 1934, Tramer founded the Zeitschrift für Kinderpsychiatrie (Journal of Child Psychiatry), which later became Acta Paedopsychiatria. The first academic child psychiatry department in the world was founded in 1930 by Leo Kanner (1894-1981), an Austrian émigré and medical graduate of the University of Berlin, under the direction of Adolf Meyer at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Kanner was the very first physician to be identified as a child psychiatrist in the US and his textbook, Child Psychiatry (1935), is credited with introducing both the specialty and the term to the anglophone academic community. In 1936, Kanner established the first formal elective course in child psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. In 1944 he provided the first clinical description of early infantile autism, otherwise known as Kanner Syndrome.

Maria Montessori together with It:Giuseppe Ferruccio Montesano and Clodomiro Bonfigli, two distinguished child psychiatrists, created in 1901 in Italy the “Lega Nazionale per la Protezione del Fanciullo” (National League for the Protection of Children). She gradually developed her own pedagogic method, initially based on the “intuition that the question of the ‘mentally deficient’ was more pedagogic than medical”. In 1909, Jane Addams and her female colleagues established the Juvenile Psychopathic Institute (JPI) in Chicago, later renamed as the Institute for Juvenile Research (IJR), the world’s first child guidance clinic. Neurologist William Healy, M.D., its first director, was charged with not only studying the delinquent’s biological aspects of brain functioning and IQ, but also the delinquent’s social factors, attitudes, and motivations, thus it was the birthplace of American child psychiatry.

From its establishment in February 1923, the Maudsley Hospital, a South London-based postgraduate teaching and research psychiatric hospital, contained a small children’s department. Similar overall early developments took place in many other countries during the late 1920s and 1930s. In the United States, child and adolescent psychiatry was established as a recognised medical speciality in 1953 with the founding of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, but was not established as a legitimate, board-certifiable medical speciality until 1959.

The use of medication in the treatment of children also began in the 1930s, when Charles Bradley opened a neuropsychiatric unit and was the first to use amphetamine for brain-damaged and hyperactive children. But it was not until the 1960s that the first NIH grant to study paediatric psychopharmacology was awarded. It went to one of Kanner’s students, Leon Eisenberg, the second director of the division.

The discipline has relatively flourished since the 1980s, in large part, because of contributions made in the 1970s, even if the outcomes for patients have been disappointing at times. It was a decade during which child psychiatry witnessed a major evolution as a result of the work carried out by, Eva Frommer, Douglas Haldane, Michael Rutter, Robin Skynner and Sula Wolff, among others. The first comprehensive population survey of 9- to 11-year-olds, carried out in London and the Isle of Wight, which appeared in 1970, addressed questions that have continued to be of importance for child psychiatry; for example, rates of psychiatric disorders, the role of intellectual development and physical impairment, and specific concern for potential social influences on children’s adjustment. This work was influential, especially since the investigators demonstrated specific continuities of psychopathology over time, and the influence of social and contextual factors in children’s mental health, in their subsequent re-evaluation of the original cohort of children. These studies described the prevalence of ADHD (relatively low as compared to the US), identified the onset and prevalence of depression in mid-adolescence and the frequent co-morbidity with conduct disorder, and explored the relationship between various mental disorders and scholastic achievement.

It was paralleled similarly by work on the epidemiology of autism that was to enormously increase the number of children diagnosed with autism in future years. Although attention had been given in the 1960s and ’70s to the classification of childhood psychiatric disorders, and some issues had then been delineated, such as the distinction between neurotic and conduct disorders, the nomenclature did not parallel the growing clinical knowledge. It was claimed that this situation was altered in the late 1970s with the development of the DSM-III system of classification, although research has shown that this system of classification has problems of validity and reliability. Since then, the DSM-IV and DSM-IVR have altered some of the parsing of psychiatric disorders into “childhood” and “adult” disorders, on the basis that while many psychiatric disorders are not diagnosed until adulthood, they may present in childhood or adolescence (DSM-IV). The American Psychiatric Association’s DSM is now on its fifth edition (DSM-5).

People in the field are sometimes referred to as “neurodevelopmentalists”. As of 2005 there was debate in the field as to whether “neurodevelopmentalist” should be made a new speciality.

In terms of patient outcomes, there is evidence that, in the United Kingdom at least on the 70th anniversary of the NHS, mental health remains a medical “Cinderella” (low priority) and the more so Child and Adolescent Health services which have been through repeated reorganisations and underinvestment all of which leads to disruption and loss of adequate provision.

“Modern neuroscience, genetics, epigenetics, and public health research has presented the tantalizing possibility that it can now be said with relative certainty that much (certainly not all) is understood about why some children struggle and others soar. Although it is an oversimplification, it can now be suggested that it is possible to understand how environmental factors, both negative and positive, influence the genome or epigenome, which in turn influence the structure and function of the brain and thus human thoughts, actions, and behaviors.”

Classification of Disorders

Not an exhaustive list:

  • Developmental disorders:
    • Autism spectrum disorder.
    • Learning disorders.
  • Disorders of attention and behaviour:
    • Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
    • Oppositional defiant disorder.
    • Conduct disorder.
  • Psychotic disorders:
    • Childhood schizophrenia.
  • Mood disorders:
    • Major depressive disorder.
    • Bipolar disorder.
    • Persistent Depressive Disorder.
    • Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder.
  • Anxiety disorders:
    • Panic disorder.
    • Phobias.
  • Eating disorders:
    • Anorexia nervosa.
    • Bulimia nervosa.
  • Gender identity disorder:
    • Gender identity disorder in children.

Disorders are often comorbid. For example, an adolescent can be diagnosed with both major depressive disorder and generalised anxiety disorder. The incidence of psychiatric comorbidities during adolescence may vary by race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status, among other variables.

Clinical Practice

Assessment

The psychiatric assessment of a child or adolescent starts with obtaining a psychiatric history by interviewing the young person and their parents or caregivers. The assessment includes a detailed exploration of the current concerns about the child’s emotional or behavioural problems, the child’s physical health and development, history of parental care (including possible abuse and neglect), family relationships and history of parental mental illness. It is regarded as desirable to obtain information from multiple sources (for example both parents, or a parent and a grandparent) as informants may give widely differing accounts of the child’s problems. Collateral information is usually obtained from the child’s school with regards to academic performance, peer relationships, and behaviour in the school environment.

Psychiatric assessment always includes a mental state examination of the child or adolescent which consists of a careful behavioural observation and a first-hand account of the young person’s subjective experiences. The assessment also includes an observation of the interactions within the family, especially the interactions between the child and his/her parents.

The assessment may be supplemented by the use of behaviour or symptom rating scales such as the Achenbach Child Behaviour Checklist or CBCL, the Behavioural Assessment System for Children or BASC, Connors Rating Scales (used for diagnosis of ADHD), Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory or MACI, and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire or SDQ. These instruments bring a degree of objectivity and consistency to the clinical assessment. More specialised psychometric testing may be carried out by a psychologist, for example using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, to detect intellectual impairment or other cognitive problems which may be contributing to the child’s difficulties.

Diagnosis and Formulation

The child and adolescent psychiatrist makes a diagnosis based on the pattern of behaviour and emotional symptoms, using a standardized set of diagnostic criteria such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV-TR) or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). While the DSM system is widely used, it may not adequately take into account social, cultural and contextual factors and it has been suggested that an individualized clinical formulation may be more useful. A case formulation is standard practice for child and adolescent psychiatrists and can be defined as a process of integrating and summarising all the relevant factors implicated in the development of the patient’s problem, including biological, psychological, social and cultural perspectives (the “biopsychosocial model”). The applicability of DSM diagnoses have also been questioned with regard to the assessment of very young children: it is argued that very young children are developing too rapidly to be adequately described by a fixed diagnosis, and furthermore that a diagnosis unhelpfully locates the problem within the child when the parent-child relationship is a more appropriate focus of assessment.

The child and adolescent psychiatrist then designs a treatment plan which considers all the components and discusses these recommendations with the child or adolescent and family.

Treatment

Treatment will usually involve one or more of the following elements: behaviour therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), problem-solving therapies, psychodynamic therapy, parent training programmes, family therapy, and/or the use of medication. The intervention can also include consultation with paediatricians, primary care physicians or professionals from schools, juvenile courts, social agencies or other community organisations.

In a review of existing meta-analyses and disorders on the four most frequent childhood and adolescent psychiatric disorders (anxiety disorder, depression, ADHD, conduct disorder), only for ADHD was the use of medication (stimulants) considered to be the most efficacious treatment option available. For the remaining three disorders, psychotherapy is recommended as the most effective treatment of choice. A combination of psychological and pharmacological treatments is an important option in ADHD and depressive disorders. Treatments for ADHD and anxiety disorders produce higher effect-sizes than do interventions for depressive and conduct disorders.

Training

In the United States, Child and adolescent psychiatric training requires 4 years of medical school, at least 4 years of approved residency training in medicine, neurology, and general psychiatry with adults, and 2 years of additional specialised training in psychiatric work with children, adolescents, and their families in an accredited residency in child and adolescent psychiatry. Child and adolescent sub-speciality training is similar in other Western countries (such as the UK, New Zealand, and Australia), in that trainees must generally demonstrate competency in general adult psychiatry prior to commencing sub-speciality training.

Certification and Continuing Education

In the US, having completed the child and adolescent psychiatry residency, the child and adolescent psychiatrist is eligible to take the additional certification examination in the subspecialty of child and adolescent psychiatry from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN) or the American Osteopathic Board of Neurology and Psychiatry (AOBNP). Although the ABPN and AOBNP examinations are not required for practice, they are a further assurance that the child and adolescent psychiatrist with these certifications can be expected to diagnose and treat all psychiatric conditions in patients of any age competently. Training requirements are listed on the web site of The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

Shortage of Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists in the United States

The demand for child and adolescent psychiatrists continues to far outstrip the supply worldwide. There is also a severe maldistribution of child and adolescent psychiatrists, especially in rural and poor, urban areas where access is significantly reduced. As of 2016, there are 7991 child and adolescent psychiatrists in the United States. A report by the US Bureau of Health Professions (2000) projected a need by the year 2020 for 12,624 child and adolescent psychiatrists, but a supply of only 8,312. In its 1998 report, the Centre for Mental Health Services estimated that 9-13% of 9- to 17-year-olds had serious emotional disturbances, and 5-9% had extreme functional impairments. In 1999, however, the Surgeon General reported that “there is a dearth of child psychiatrists.” Only 20% of emotionally disturbed children and adolescents received any mental health treatment, a small percentage of which was performed by child and adolescent psychiatrists. Furthermore, the US Bureau of Health Professions projects that the demand for child and adolescent psychiatry services will increase by 100% between 1995 and 2020.

Cross-Cultural Considerations

Steady growth in migration of immigrants to higher-income regions and countries has contributed to the growth and interest in cross-cultural psychiatry. Families of immigrants whose child has a psychiatric illness must come to understand the disorder while navigating an unfamiliar health care system.

Criticisms

Subjective Diagnoses

One criticism against psychiatry is that psychiatric diagnoses lack complete “objectivity,” particularly when compared with diagnoses in other medical specialties. However, for several major psychiatric disorders interrater reliability, which shows the degree to which psychiatrists agree on the diagnosis, is generally similar to those in other medical specialties. In 2013, Allen Frances said that “psychiatric diagnosis still relies exclusively on fallible subjective judgements rather than objective biological tests.”

Traditional deficit and disease models of child psychiatry have been criticised as rooted in the medical model which conceptualises adjustment problems in terms of disease states. It is said by these critics that these normative models explicitly characterise problematic behaviour as representing a disorder within the child or young person and these commentators assert that the role of environmental influences on behaviour has become increasingly neglected, leading to a decrease in the popularity of, for example, family therapy. There are criticisms of the medical model approach from within and without the psychiatric profession: it is said to neglect the role of environmental, family, and cultural influences, to discount the psychological meaning of behaviour and symptoms, to promote a view of the “patient” as dependent and needing to be cured or cared for and therefore undermines a sense of personal responsibility for conduct and behaviour, to promote a normative conception based on adaptation to the norms of society (the ill person must adapt to society), and to be based on the shaky foundations of reliance on a classificatory system that has been shown to have problems of validity and reliability.

Prescription of Psychotropic Medications

Since the late 1990s, use of psychiatric medication has become increasingly common for children and adolescents. In 2004 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued the Black Box Warning on antidepressant prescriptions to alert patients of a research link between use of medication and apparent increased risk of suicidal thoughts, hostility, and agitation in paediatric patients. The most common diagnoses for which children receive psychiatric medication are ADHD, ODD, and conduct disorder.

Some research suggests that children and adolescents are sometimes given antipsychotic drugs as a first-line treatment for mental health problems or behavioural issues other than a psychotic disorder. In the United States, the usage of these drugs in young people has greatly increased since 2000, especially among children from low-income families. More research is needed to specifically assess the efficacy and tolerability of antipsychotic medications in paediatric populations. Because of the risk of metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular events with long-term antipsychotic use, use in paediatric populations is highly scrutinized and recommended in combination with psychotherapy and effective parent-training interventions.

Electroconvulsive Therapy

In 1947, child neuropsychiatrist Lauretta Bender published a study on 98 children aged between four and eleven years old who had been treated in the previous five years with intensive courses of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). These children received ECT daily for a typical course of approximately twenty treatments. This formed part of an experimental trend amongst a cadre of psychiatrists to explore the therapeutic impact of intensive regimes of ECT, which is also known as either regressive ECT or annihilation therapy. In the 1950s Bender abandoned ECT as a therapeutic practice for the treatment of children. In the same decade the results of her published work on the use of ECT in children was discredited after a study showing that the condition of the children so treated had either not improved or deteriorated. Commenting on his experience as part of Bender’s therapeutic program, Ted Chabasinski said that, “It really made a mess of me … I went from being a shy kid who read a lot to a terrified kid who cried all the time.” Following his treatment, he spent ten years as an inmate of Rockland State Hospital, a psychiatric facility now known as the Rockland Psychiatric Centre.

What is Relational Disorder?

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Introduction

According to Michael First of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Version 5 (DSM-5) working committee the focus of a relational disorder, in contrast to other DSM-IV disorders, “is on the relationship rather than on any one individual in the relationship”.

Relational disorders involve two or more individuals and a disordered “juncture”, whereas typical Axis I psychopathology describes a disorder at the individual level. An additional criterion for a relational disorder is that the disorder cannot be due solely to a problem in one member of the relationship, but requires pathological interaction from each of the individuals involved in the relationship.

For example, if a parent is withdrawn from one child but not another, the dysfunction could be attributed to a relational disorder. In contrast, if a parent is withdrawn from both children, the dysfunction may be more appropriately attributable to a disorder at the individual level.

First states that “relational disorders share many elements in common with other disorders: there are distinctive features for classification; they can cause clinically significant impairment; there are recognizable clinical courses and patterns of comorbidity; they respond to specific treatments; and they can be prevented with early interventions. Specific tasks in a proposed research agenda: develop assessment modules; determine the clinical utility of relational disorders; determine the role of relational disorders in the aetiology and maintenance of individual disorders; and consider aspects of relational disorders that might be modulated by individual disorders.”

The proposed new diagnosis defines a relational disorder as “persistent and painful patterns of feelings, behaviors, and perceptions” among two or more people in an important personal relationship, such a husband and wife, or a parent and children.

According to psychiatrist Darrel Regier, MD, some psychiatrists and other therapists involved in couples and marital counselling have recommended that the new diagnosis be considered for possible incorporation into the DSM IV.

Brief History

The idea of a psychology of relational disorders is far from new. According to Adam Blatner, MD, some of the early psychoanalysts alluded to it more or less directly, and the history of marital couple therapy began with a few pioneers in 1930s. J.L. Moreno, the inventor of psychodrama and a major pioneer of group psychotherapy and social psychology, noted the idea that relationships could be “sick” even if the people involved were otherwise “healthy,” and even vice versa: Otherwise “sick” people could find themselves in a mutually supportive and “healthy” relationship.

Moreno’s ideas may have influenced some of the pioneers of family therapy, but also there were developments in general science, namely, cybernetic theory, developed in the mid-1940s, and noting the nature of circularity and feedback in complex systems. By the 1950s, the idea that relationships themselves could be problematic became quite apparent. So, diagnostically, in the sense not of naming a disease or disorder, but just helping people think through what was really going on, the idea of relational disorder was nothing new.

Types

The majority of research on relational disorders concerns three relationship systems:

  • Adult children and their parents;
  • Minor children and their parents; and
  • The marital relationship.

There is also an increasing body of research on problems in dyadic gay relationships and on problematic sibling relationships.

Marital

Marital disorders are divided into “Marital Conflict Disorder Without Violence” and “Marital Abuse Disorder (Marital Conflict Disorder With Violence).” Couples with marital disorders sometimes come to clinical attention because the couple recognise long-standing dissatisfaction with their marriage and come to the clinician on their own initiative or are referred by a health care professional. Secondly, there is serious violence in the marriage which is “usually the husband battering the wife”. In these cases the emergency room or a legal authority often is the first to notify the clinician.

Most importantly, marital violence “is a major risk factor for serious injury and even death and women in violent marriages are at much greater risk of being seriously injured or killed” (National Advisory Council on Violence Against Women 2000). The authors of this study add that “There is current considerable controversy over whether male-to-female marital violence is best regarded as a reflection of male psychopathology and control or whether there is an empirical base and clinical utility for conceptualizing these patterns as relational.”

Recommendations for clinicians making a diagnosis of “Marital Relational Disorder” should include the assessment of actual or “potential” male violence as regularly as they assess the potential for suicide in depressed patients. Further, “clinicians should not relax their vigilance after a battered wife leaves her husband, because some data suggest that the period immediately following a marital separation is the period of greatest risk for the women.

Many men will stalk and batter their wives in an effort to get them to return or punish them for leaving. Initial assessments of the potential for violence in a marriage can be supplemented by standardised interviews and questionnaires, which have been reliable and valid aids in exploring marital violence more systematically.

The authors conclude with what they call “very recent information” on the course of violent marriages which suggests that “over time a husband’s battering may abate somewhat, but perhaps because he has successfully intimidated his wife.”

The risk of violence remains strong in a marriage in which it has been a feature in the past. Thus, treatment is essential here; the clinician cannot just wait and watch. The most urgent clinical priority is the protection of the wife because she is the one most frequently at risk, and clinicians must be aware that supporting assertiveness by a battered wife may lead to more beatings or even death.

In some cases, men are abuse victims of their wives; there is not exclusively male-on-female physical violence, although this is more common than female-on-male violence.

Parent-Child Abuse

Research on parent-child abuse bears similarities to that on marital violence, with the defining characteristic of the disorder being physical aggression by a parent toward a child. The disorder is frequently concealed by parent and child, but may come to the attention of the clinician in several ways, from emergency room medical staff to reports from child protection services.

Some features of abusive parent–child relationships that serve as a starting point for classification include:

  • The parent is physically aggressive with a child, often producing physical injury;
  • Parent-child interaction is coercive, and parents are quick to react to provocations with aggressive responses, and children often reciprocate aggression;
  • Parents do not respond effectively to positive or prosocial behaviour in the child;
  • Parents do not engage in discussion about emotions;
  • Parent engages in deficient play behaviour, ignores the child, rarely initiates play, and does little teaching;
  • Children are insecurely attached and, where mothers have a history of physical abuse, show distinctive patterns of disorganised attachment; and
  • Parents relationship shows coercive marital interaction patterns.

Defining the relational aspects of these disorders can have important consequences. For example, in the case of early appearing feeding disorders, attention to relational problems may help delineate different types of clinical problems within an otherwise broad category. In the case of conduct disorder, the relational problems may be so central to the maintenance, if not the aetiology, of the disorder that effective treatment may be impossible without recognising and delineating it.