To achieve this, psychotherapists and counsellors need to be able to apply Child Development concepts and research findings in their therapeutic practice; in order to identify and work with challenges like:

• Early childhood memory that is embodied in physiological sensations, entrenched in affect, or unconsciously enacted in relationships. Such memories are not available to conscious thought because they are prelinguistic, presymbolic, procedural, and implicit. However, these neurological imprints give rise to unconscious relational patterns that effect our clients in their adult lives.
• Physiological, emotional and behavioral signs of infant and parent relational disruptions are evident in the first few months of a child’s life and throughout adolescence. We may see subtle versions of these same self-stabilizing dynamics in adult clients when they tighten their bodies, agitate, avoid eye contact, or deflect from their feelings. Such behaviours may signal unresolved relational disruptions in early childhood, that continue to create disruptions and conflicts later in adulthood.
• Generating methods that are attuned to an infant’s, young child’s, or school-age child’s particular rhythm, their affect and cognitive level of functioning, and the unique relational-needs at the level of development where an adult client may be fixated. We need to be therapeutically responsive to the withdrawn and silent client, the client who is either hypo- or hyperactive, as well as the client who is resistive or belligerent. Each of these behavioural manifestations may reflect the neglects and traumas that leave a person stuck at an earlier level of development.

This 2-day workshop at London will focus on various methods of psychotherapy that are influenced by the theories and research in Child Development. We will explore various child development hypotheses and concepts that are based on the writings of John Bowlby, Eric Erickson, Selma Fraiberg, Lawrence Kohlberg, Jean Piaget, Daniel Stern, and Donald Winnicott as well as a number of current child development researchers. Specifically, we will look at:

• creating developmental images and hypotheses
• assessing and responding to unconscious attachment patterns
• converting body sensations and affect to language
• enabling the formation of vocabulary and concepts
• constructing life narratives through inference
• using phenomenological and historical inquiry, and
• facilitating an emotionally safe therapeutic age regression

To prepare for this workshop participants are requested to read the following:

• Moursund, J.P. and Erskine, R.G. (2003). Integrative Psychotherapy: The Art and Science of Relationship. Pacific Grove: Brooks/Cole Thomson Learning.
• Erskine, R. G. (2015). Relational Patterns, Therapeutic Presence: Concepts and Practice of Integrative Psychotherapy. London: Karnac Books.

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