Kenneth Barish - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Kenneth Barish
ADHD Report, 2021
This commentary is a response to a series of articles published in The ADHD Report Special Issues... more This commentary is a response to a series of articles published in The ADHD Report Special Issues of February and March, 2018. The Special Issues
presented several important discussions of potential adverse effects of psychosocial treatments for children and teens with ADHD. In this commentary, I will offer some thoughts and recommendations on this
topic that I hope will be helpful to therapists working with these challenging
families.
Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2022
Jack and Kerry Kelly Novick, along with Denia and Thomas Barrett and an international group of ch... more Jack and Kerry Kelly Novick, along with Denia and Thomas Barrett and an international group of child and adolescent psychoanalysts, have given us two unique and important books on the psychoanalytic treatment of children and adolescents. Both Casebooks present detailed therapeutic work, followed by commentaries and editorial reflections. All of the therapists and discussants are anonymous, ensuring greater confidentiality and allowing more in-depth descriptions of the therapeutic process. Parent Work Casebook The Parent Work Casebook is devoted to work with parents of children and adolescents. The Casebook argues, as a central premise, for the importance of working with parents for successful child therapy. The volume succeeds in this goal. The cases convincingly demonstrate the importance of parent work. The Casebook is informed by several therapeutic principles, discussed in previous publications by the Novicks (Work with Parents Makes Therapy Work; Freedom to Choose; Novick & Novick, 2005, 2016). The book begins with a statement of two fundamental goals of child and adolescent therapy: (1) "restoration of the child to the path of progressive development" and (2) "restoration of the parentchild relationship to a lifelong constructive resource for both." The editors briefly describe the "two systems of self-regulation" model of emotional development (Novick & Novick, 2016). Successful therapy promotes a "shift from a predominantly closed system power struggle to open-system function, based on cooperation, mutuality, respect, and love." This important contribution to clinical theory deserves more widespread recognition and more frequent use in clinical work. The cases present a variety of kinds of parent work. The analysts are faced with some of our most common, yet also most difficult, clinical dilemmas-parents whose actions threaten the continuation of treatment; how to maintain a therapeutic alliance with parents whose relationship is relentlessly adversarial and mutually denigrating, and actively attempt to undermine a child's relationship with the other parent; how to convey empathy for parents' concerns but still challenge actions that are harmful to children. The therapists respond to these difficult clinical problems with thoughtfulness, empathy, tact, and skill. The case reports describe children and families of different ages, with different problems, and requiring different kinds of parent work. The first case is of a 4-year-old boy whose parents are helped to understand his fear of past and upcoming surgeries as a source of his gender dysphoria. Another contribution describes work with parents of a 6-year-old boy diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder who has suffered abusive treatment in a day care setting. An especially thoughtful contribution reports work with a mother who suffers from delusions that lead to periods of withdrawal and paranoid accusations against the child's father. In other cases, parents are helped
The Humanistic Psychologist, 2020
This article considers the nature of empathy and the importance of empathy in many forms of human... more This article considers the nature of empathy and the importance of empathy in many forms of human interaction. The impetus for this discussion is a recent book by Paul Bloom, Against Empathy: The Case For Rational Compassion (2016). Bloom presents a controversial and provocative thesis. Although he acknowledges some benefits of empathy, Bloom challenges the conventional wisdom that many problems of modern society are due to a lack of empathy. He argues that reasoned compassion is a more reliable guide than empathy to moral decision-making.
Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2023
In this article, I will discuss how affective neuroscience can help us be better child therapists... more In this article, I will discuss how affective neuroscience can help us be better
child therapists. I will highlight several important contributions of affective
neuroscience, especially theory and research on SEEKING, PLAY, separation
distress, and the role of positive emotion systems in child mental health. I will describe how these ideas deepen our understanding of healthy and pathological emotional development in childhood and inform our therapeutic
work with both children and parents. I will also discuss the importance of
feelings of pride and shame – vital aspects of children’s emotional lives that
have not yet been extensively studied by affective neuroscience. I will briefly
describe an integrative model for child therapy, informed by both psychodynamic theory and affective neuroscience. Our most successful interventions with children and families 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. In this way, we help troubled children and families reclaim some of
the joyousness and wonder of childhood.
Medical Research Archives, European Society of Medicine, 2023
In this article, I will present a contemporary understanding of the nature of empathy and the imp... more In this article, I will present a contemporary understanding of the nature of empathy and the importance of empathy in successful psychotherapy with children. This perspective highlights the intrinsic relationship of empathy and affect. I will consider how the child therapist's empathy is expressed and offer a specific hypothesis on the therapeutic efficacy of empathic understanding in clinical work with children. Finally, I will discuss how the experience of empathic understanding is beneficial in the emotional life of the child and in all human relationships, throughout life.
Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2006
This article continues my discussion of the process of therapeutic change in psychodynamic child ... more This article continues my discussion of the process of therapeutic change in psychodynamic child therapy. In a previous essay (Barish, 2004), I stressed the therapeutic benefit of enhancing the child's positive affects as well as developing his or her capacity to tolerate painful affects. I now propose an extension of these ideas, a perspective on the nature of psychopathology in childhood and the implications of this perspective for our understanding of the therapeutic process, based on the clinical concepts of emotional injury and normal reparative processes. Every emotional injury evokes in the child a complex affective experience, comprised of painful emotions as well as an intensification of the child's instinctive self-protective responses—some form of withdrawal and/or retaliatory response. In normal psychological development, as in healthy biological systems, reparative processes function to heal injuries. Failure of these normal reparative processes sets in motion m...
Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2020
Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2020
This article reviews evidence for the importance of play in children's social and emotional devel... more This article reviews evidence for the importance of play in children's social and emotional development. Play is an essential pathway toward social maturity in young children. Children experience interactive play with admired adults as a form of affirming responsiveness, a basic nutrient of emotional health that all children want and need. Children learn through interactive play how to make accommodations and cooperate with others, how to cope with frustration and disappointment, and to develop selfrestraint. Improved problem solving, creativity, and cognitive flexibility are also intrinsic to children's play. All of these aspects of emotional maturity come together, synergistically, when we play with children. They are not learned, however, in front of a screen. The many benefits of play to children's social maturity leads to a first clinical implication: As child therapists, we should help parents understand the importance of play and regularly encourage both mothers and fathers to play, frequently and enthusiastically, with their children. Child psychotherapy began as play therapy. At the inception of our field, the first generation of child therapists valued a child's play especially for its symbolic content, allowing the communication of feelings and emotional conflicts children were unable to openly express. Play, in this therapeutic model, is how we learn about a child's inner life. This first therapeutic function of play remains important, in therapy and in children's daily lives, helping young children cope with both common and traumatic experiences of anxiety, anger, and sadness (Barnett, 1984; Barnett & Storm, 1981; Li et al., 2007). Play is especially helpful in circumstances that have prevented the normal expression of feelings, perhaps because of guilt or shame, or a parent's explicit prohibition ("things relegated to silence," Mathelin, 1999). A child's play, however, is not always revealing in this way, and moments of insight and understanding may not be apparent for a long time. Often, in both therapy and everyday life, children are "simply playing" (Slade, 1994). When we try to talk, they may ignore our comments, cover their ears, or tell us, more boldly, to "shut up and play" (Bellinson, 1998). We have all encountered this "resistance"; experienced child therapists, masters of their craft, routinely report the varied ways, subtle and not so subtle, that children rebuff our efforts to interpret the meaning of their playor to talk at all.
Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2018
This article presents a clinical theory of healthy and pathological child development. I offer th... more This article presents a clinical theory of healthy and pathological child development. I offer the hypothesis that persistent emotional and behavioral problems in childhood and adolescence are caused by painful emotions that remain active in the mind of the child-a bad feeling that does not go away. Over time, troubled children have become discouraged. Their discouragement has most often developed in the context of ongoing pathogenic family relationships-vicious cycles of frequent criticism, punishment, or lack of understanding on the part of parents and increasing defiance, resentment, and withdrawal on the part of children. Successful therapy arrests this malignant process. Children learn (as they do in healthy emotional development) that they will not always feel this way, at least not in the same way they do now. We then begin to turn vicious cycles into positive cycles-to strengthen in our child and adolescent patients a more encouraging, less critical inner dialogue and a new sense of what is possible in their lives.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, 2019
Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2018
This article presents an integrative theory of pathological development in childhood and an inclu... more 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 experiencesincreased 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.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, 2004
... beginning with Freud's (1911/ 1957) Formulations of the Two Principles of M... more ... beginning with Freud's (1911/ 1957) Formulations of the Two Principles of Mental Functioning and the momentous step in a child's emotional development ... have been presented by Zetzel (1965) on the capacity to bear or master anxiety and depression and by Krystal (1976 ...
Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2004
The therapist's use of self, much debated in psychotherapy with adult patients, has received lit... more The therapist's use of self, much debated in psychotherapy with adult patients,
has received little explicit consideration in discussions of clinical work with
children. In this clinical essay, I describe a style of working with children and
early adolescents in psychotherapy that makes liberal use of the therapist's
“self,” both in the narrow sense of the therapist's self-disclosure and in the
broader sense of the use of the therapist's personality, intuition, and affective
expressiveness. My discussion focuses on two facets of therapeutic work with
children: (a) the use of self in the engagement of children in the treatment
process and (b) the child therapist as a source of emotional support. Although
not without some risks and limitations, and always accompanied by a necessary
appreciation of the unique temperament and character of each child, talking
personally to children fosters the child's openness in talking with us. At
moments of acute distress, many children also derive immediate, visible
emotional support—and, one hopes, some lasting increment of self-acceptance
—from the child therapist's generative and humanizing expressions of self.
ADHD Report, 2021
This commentary is a response to a series of articles published in The ADHD Report Special Issues... more This commentary is a response to a series of articles published in The ADHD Report Special Issues of February and March, 2018. The Special Issues
presented several important discussions of potential adverse effects of psychosocial treatments for children and teens with ADHD. In this commentary, I will offer some thoughts and recommendations on this
topic that I hope will be helpful to therapists working with these challenging
families.
Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2022
Jack and Kerry Kelly Novick, along with Denia and Thomas Barrett and an international group of ch... more Jack and Kerry Kelly Novick, along with Denia and Thomas Barrett and an international group of child and adolescent psychoanalysts, have given us two unique and important books on the psychoanalytic treatment of children and adolescents. Both Casebooks present detailed therapeutic work, followed by commentaries and editorial reflections. All of the therapists and discussants are anonymous, ensuring greater confidentiality and allowing more in-depth descriptions of the therapeutic process. Parent Work Casebook The Parent Work Casebook is devoted to work with parents of children and adolescents. The Casebook argues, as a central premise, for the importance of working with parents for successful child therapy. The volume succeeds in this goal. The cases convincingly demonstrate the importance of parent work. The Casebook is informed by several therapeutic principles, discussed in previous publications by the Novicks (Work with Parents Makes Therapy Work; Freedom to Choose; Novick & Novick, 2005, 2016). The book begins with a statement of two fundamental goals of child and adolescent therapy: (1) "restoration of the child to the path of progressive development" and (2) "restoration of the parentchild relationship to a lifelong constructive resource for both." The editors briefly describe the "two systems of self-regulation" model of emotional development (Novick & Novick, 2016). Successful therapy promotes a "shift from a predominantly closed system power struggle to open-system function, based on cooperation, mutuality, respect, and love." This important contribution to clinical theory deserves more widespread recognition and more frequent use in clinical work. The cases present a variety of kinds of parent work. The analysts are faced with some of our most common, yet also most difficult, clinical dilemmas-parents whose actions threaten the continuation of treatment; how to maintain a therapeutic alliance with parents whose relationship is relentlessly adversarial and mutually denigrating, and actively attempt to undermine a child's relationship with the other parent; how to convey empathy for parents' concerns but still challenge actions that are harmful to children. The therapists respond to these difficult clinical problems with thoughtfulness, empathy, tact, and skill. The case reports describe children and families of different ages, with different problems, and requiring different kinds of parent work. The first case is of a 4-year-old boy whose parents are helped to understand his fear of past and upcoming surgeries as a source of his gender dysphoria. Another contribution describes work with parents of a 6-year-old boy diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder who has suffered abusive treatment in a day care setting. An especially thoughtful contribution reports work with a mother who suffers from delusions that lead to periods of withdrawal and paranoid accusations against the child's father. In other cases, parents are helped
The Humanistic Psychologist, 2020
This article considers the nature of empathy and the importance of empathy in many forms of human... more This article considers the nature of empathy and the importance of empathy in many forms of human interaction. The impetus for this discussion is a recent book by Paul Bloom, Against Empathy: The Case For Rational Compassion (2016). Bloom presents a controversial and provocative thesis. Although he acknowledges some benefits of empathy, Bloom challenges the conventional wisdom that many problems of modern society are due to a lack of empathy. He argues that reasoned compassion is a more reliable guide than empathy to moral decision-making.
Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2023
In this article, I will discuss how affective neuroscience can help us be better child therapists... more In this article, I will discuss how affective neuroscience can help us be better
child therapists. I will highlight several important contributions of affective
neuroscience, especially theory and research on SEEKING, PLAY, separation
distress, and the role of positive emotion systems in child mental health. I will describe how these ideas deepen our understanding of healthy and pathological emotional development in childhood and inform our therapeutic
work with both children and parents. I will also discuss the importance of
feelings of pride and shame – vital aspects of children’s emotional lives that
have not yet been extensively studied by affective neuroscience. I will briefly
describe an integrative model for child therapy, informed by both psychodynamic theory and affective neuroscience. Our most successful interventions with children and families 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. In this way, we help troubled children and families reclaim some of
the joyousness and wonder of childhood.
Medical Research Archives, European Society of Medicine, 2023
In this article, I will present a contemporary understanding of the nature of empathy and the imp... more In this article, I will present a contemporary understanding of the nature of empathy and the importance of empathy in successful psychotherapy with children. This perspective highlights the intrinsic relationship of empathy and affect. I will consider how the child therapist's empathy is expressed and offer a specific hypothesis on the therapeutic efficacy of empathic understanding in clinical work with children. Finally, I will discuss how the experience of empathic understanding is beneficial in the emotional life of the child and in all human relationships, throughout life.
Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2006
This article continues my discussion of the process of therapeutic change in psychodynamic child ... more This article continues my discussion of the process of therapeutic change in psychodynamic child therapy. In a previous essay (Barish, 2004), I stressed the therapeutic benefit of enhancing the child's positive affects as well as developing his or her capacity to tolerate painful affects. I now propose an extension of these ideas, a perspective on the nature of psychopathology in childhood and the implications of this perspective for our understanding of the therapeutic process, based on the clinical concepts of emotional injury and normal reparative processes. Every emotional injury evokes in the child a complex affective experience, comprised of painful emotions as well as an intensification of the child's instinctive self-protective responses—some form of withdrawal and/or retaliatory response. In normal psychological development, as in healthy biological systems, reparative processes function to heal injuries. Failure of these normal reparative processes sets in motion m...
Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2020
Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2020
This article reviews evidence for the importance of play in children's social and emotional devel... more This article reviews evidence for the importance of play in children's social and emotional development. Play is an essential pathway toward social maturity in young children. Children experience interactive play with admired adults as a form of affirming responsiveness, a basic nutrient of emotional health that all children want and need. Children learn through interactive play how to make accommodations and cooperate with others, how to cope with frustration and disappointment, and to develop selfrestraint. Improved problem solving, creativity, and cognitive flexibility are also intrinsic to children's play. All of these aspects of emotional maturity come together, synergistically, when we play with children. They are not learned, however, in front of a screen. The many benefits of play to children's social maturity leads to a first clinical implication: As child therapists, we should help parents understand the importance of play and regularly encourage both mothers and fathers to play, frequently and enthusiastically, with their children. Child psychotherapy began as play therapy. At the inception of our field, the first generation of child therapists valued a child's play especially for its symbolic content, allowing the communication of feelings and emotional conflicts children were unable to openly express. Play, in this therapeutic model, is how we learn about a child's inner life. This first therapeutic function of play remains important, in therapy and in children's daily lives, helping young children cope with both common and traumatic experiences of anxiety, anger, and sadness (Barnett, 1984; Barnett & Storm, 1981; Li et al., 2007). Play is especially helpful in circumstances that have prevented the normal expression of feelings, perhaps because of guilt or shame, or a parent's explicit prohibition ("things relegated to silence," Mathelin, 1999). A child's play, however, is not always revealing in this way, and moments of insight and understanding may not be apparent for a long time. Often, in both therapy and everyday life, children are "simply playing" (Slade, 1994). When we try to talk, they may ignore our comments, cover their ears, or tell us, more boldly, to "shut up and play" (Bellinson, 1998). We have all encountered this "resistance"; experienced child therapists, masters of their craft, routinely report the varied ways, subtle and not so subtle, that children rebuff our efforts to interpret the meaning of their playor to talk at all.
Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2018
This article presents a clinical theory of healthy and pathological child development. I offer th... more This article presents a clinical theory of healthy and pathological child development. I offer the hypothesis that persistent emotional and behavioral problems in childhood and adolescence are caused by painful emotions that remain active in the mind of the child-a bad feeling that does not go away. Over time, troubled children have become discouraged. Their discouragement has most often developed in the context of ongoing pathogenic family relationships-vicious cycles of frequent criticism, punishment, or lack of understanding on the part of parents and increasing defiance, resentment, and withdrawal on the part of children. Successful therapy arrests this malignant process. Children learn (as they do in healthy emotional development) that they will not always feel this way, at least not in the same way they do now. We then begin to turn vicious cycles into positive cycles-to strengthen in our child and adolescent patients a more encouraging, less critical inner dialogue and a new sense of what is possible in their lives.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, 2019
Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2018
This article presents an integrative theory of pathological development in childhood and an inclu... more 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 experiencesincreased 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.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, 2004
... beginning with Freud's (1911/ 1957) Formulations of the Two Principles of M... more ... beginning with Freud's (1911/ 1957) Formulations of the Two Principles of Mental Functioning and the momentous step in a child's emotional development ... have been presented by Zetzel (1965) on the capacity to bear or master anxiety and depression and by Krystal (1976 ...
Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 2004
The therapist's use of self, much debated in psychotherapy with adult patients, has received lit... more The therapist's use of self, much debated in psychotherapy with adult patients,
has received little explicit consideration in discussions of clinical work with
children. In this clinical essay, I describe a style of working with children and
early adolescents in psychotherapy that makes liberal use of the therapist's
“self,” both in the narrow sense of the therapist's self-disclosure and in the
broader sense of the use of the therapist's personality, intuition, and affective
expressiveness. My discussion focuses on two facets of therapeutic work with
children: (a) the use of self in the engagement of children in the treatment
process and (b) the child therapist as a source of emotional support. Although
not without some risks and limitations, and always accompanied by a necessary
appreciation of the unique temperament and character of each child, talking
personally to children fosters the child's openness in talking with us. At
moments of acute distress, many children also derive immediate, visible
emotional support—and, one hopes, some lasting increment of self-acceptance
—from the child therapist's generative and humanizing expressions of self.