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Psychodynamic Foundations of Bioenergetic Analysis

Experiencing, Understanding and Healing the Body and the Mind
2.3 Body-Psychodynamic Therapy with Children and Adolescents | Körperpsychodynamische Therapie mit Kindern und Jugendlichen
Volume 1 Part 2: Body-Work in Practice Chapter 2.3

Body-Psychodynamic Therapy with Children and Adolescents

Carsten Holle

Even in the early stages of Psychoanalysis, therapists modified the method in order to apply it to children and adolescents. On the basis of their clinical observations, they formulated developmental-psychological concepts that still have a significant influence on psychodynamic theory and treatment techniques today. It is not only, but also thanks to their contributions that the needs of children and adolescents have gradually moved into the focus of social perception and legislation, albeit not yet to a sufficient extent. Taking particular account of bioenergetic contributions, this essay demonstrates that body-psychodynamic therapy has a potential comparable to Psychoanalysis in its work with children and adolescents, both in terms of the further development of its own theory and treatment techniques and in terms of the professionally sound representation of the interests of this most vulnerable of all population/client groups.

Link to the original publication at Routledge

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  • Surprisingly, the treatment of children and adolescents has long led a niche existence in Psychoanalysis and continues to do so in Bioenergetics – even though both methods regard childhood and adolescence as the developmentally and psychopathologically decisive phases of a person’s life!
  • The developmental-psychological knowledge gained in the treatment of children and adolescents is – or could be – correspondingly high. The work of Anna Freud and Melanie Klein impressively demonstrates that therapeutic work with children and adolescents is »real time« developmental psychology.
  • To this end, the methods must be adapted to the specific needs, limitations and abilities of children and adolescents. In addition to the knowledge gained in developmental psychology, this also results in further methodological developments for the treatment of adults.
  • The increase in knowledge about the needs and vulnerability of children and adolescents, which has been driven not least by psychodynamics, has led to the introduction of comprehensive child protection laws in recent decades. These reflect our society’s growing awareness of its duty of care towards minors and thus future generations.
  • Today’s child and adolescent therapists are particularly bound by child protection laws and the associated social focus on care. Due to the fact that their interventions may be close to the body, this applies all the more to colleagues who use body-psychotherapeutic approaches. This makes it all the more important for them to justify their actions conceptually and make them as transparent as possible.
  • The acquisition of body-psychodynamic competence, i.e., the joint thinking and therapeutic interweaving of energetic body-processes and their psychodynamically visible manifestations, provides the ideal basis for fulfilling the modern requirements of child protection and self-determination, and at the same time leads to the development of a supportive therapeutic identity.
  • Bioenergetic/body-psychotherapeutic colleagues repeatedly report that bioenergetic and psychodynamic concepts enrich each other clinically – especially with children and adolescents who, for developmental-psychological reasons, experience themselves very »close to the body« anyway.

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Carsten Holle
Carsten Holle

Carsten Holle, state-certified nurse, detour into acting and journalism, graduate in Communication Sciences at the Berlin University of the Arts,...

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