Who Is Treating the Children? Training Child and Family Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists in China

ABSTRACT

This article traces the development and evolution of The Psychodynamic Couple and Family Therapy Continuous Training Program in Beijing, China since its founding in 2009 as a two-year series of four immersion experiences in couple therapy training. The program’s learning components include a live clinical demonstration, didactic lectures, and small process learning groups. In the past 10 years, program faculty opted to include a child and family focus to address the relative absence of child psychodynamic psychotherapy training in China and the increasing mental health needs of Chinese children. Research on the training’s effectiveness is presented, highlighting the importance of the live clinical demonstration to the group’s learning, and supporting the importance of showing clinical theory and technique in action. Required adaptations from an in-person to an online training format owing to COVID are discussed. Examples drawn from the clinical demonstration, small process learning groups, and later emerging consultation groups are offered to show applications of the training model, challenges in learning, and cultural differences. The author contends that this training program and its extensions rely on the strong working alliance of its founders and illustrate the value of cross-cultural collaboration in training and treatment efforts.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychodynamic child and family psychotherapy training
• psychotherapy training in China
• training effectiveness
• training components

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Janine Wanlass

Janine Wanlass PhD is Professor of Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Westminster College, Salt Lake City, Utah; Chair, Combined Child Analytic and Child Psychotherapy training at the International Psychotherapy Institute (IPI); and teaching faculty of the International Institute for Psychoanalytic Training at IPI. She is Core Faculty of the Continuous Training Program in Couple, Child and Family Therapy at Beijing Zhi-Dao-Zhong-He Medical Institute and in the China Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training program at IPI/Jiandanxinli, and Chair, Individual Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy training at the International Psychotherapy School in Moscow. Janine Wanlass is past Director, International Psychotherapy Institute, Bethesda, MD and her private practice of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children and adults is in Salt Lake City UT.