Cycles of Understanding and Hope: Toward an Integrative Model of Therapeutic Change in Child Psychotherapy*

ABSTRACT

This article presents an integrative theory of pathological development in childhood and an inclusive model of therapeutic change, based on a contemporary understanding of children's emotions. In this model, effective therapies for children and adolescents, whether through empathy and understanding or through active efforts to change patterns of thought and behavior, arrest malignant emotional processes, especially vicious cycles of painful emotions and pathogenic family interactions. Our most successful interventions then set in motion positive cycles of healthy emotional and interpersonal experiences - increased confidence and engagement in life and more affirming interactions between parents and children. Over time, successful therapy strengthens in children and adolescents a more encouraging, less critical inner voice and, perhaps most profoundly, more positive expectations for their future - a new sense of what is possible in their lives.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

*Adapted from How to Be a Better Child Therapist by Kenneth Barish. Copyright © 2018 by Kenneth Barish. Used with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

Kenneth Barish, Ph.D. is Clinical Professor of Psychology at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is also on the faculty of the Westchester Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and the William Alanson White Institute Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program.