Report on the Child and Adolescent Section Meeting

The section meeting was attended by:

Mrs Zaiga Blaua, Latvia
Mrs MarieKoprivova, Czechoslovakia
Mrs Irana Ruzikova, Czechoslovakia
Mr Petr Pothe, Czechoslovakia
Mrs Liselotte Grünbaum, Denmark
Mrs Lydia Tischler, England
Mrs Lilo Plasches, U.S.A.
Mr George Crawford, Northern Ireland

The small number of people attending this section meeting reflected the fact that in many countries in Eastern Europe, therapeutic work with children is not a high priority. As far as we know, only in Czechoslovakia and in Estonia is there any organised training in psychoanalytic work with children.

We wondered about the reasons for this. It seems that historically, emotional disturbance in children tends to go unrecognised or, when recognised, is likely to be treated pharmacologically. Psychiatric treatments are still biologically orientated. In some countries parenting practices have tended to encourage early separation of children from their parents, placing children in kindergarten at an early age. These attitudes are of course not confined to countries in Eastern Europe but perhaps they are now more easily challenged in Western European countries where increasingly children's rights and the emotional needs of children are gaining a higher profile politically, culturally and within health care and educational systems. It was recognised that such changes in the climate of opinion are important if the emotional needs of children are to gain the priority they deserve within health, educational and social structure. Who speaks for children?

Lack of awareness of the emotional needs of children of course leads to lack of interest in and funding for training in psychotherapeutic work with children. Several people spoke of the difficulty in establishing training - the trainings themselves are demanding and the need for them is not well enough recognised. This led to discussion of what kind of training is required - where to start from. Wider ranging trainings and educational events aimed at raising awareness of the emotional vulnerability of children and of the impact of caretaking practices and emotional abuse as well as physical and sexual abuse on the wellbeing and emotional development of children were considered to be important in establishing a basis on which more specialised training might be built.

The difficulties in establishing psychodynamic ways of thinking and of practice within state managed health and care systems encouraged the development of private practice offering the freedom to work in one's own chosen way. This unfortunately means that opportunities to influence practice within state run systems are reduced.

The importance of linking specialist training to state registered accreditation systems was mentioned as a means of regulation and encouraging good standards of training.

George Crawford

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