In this seminal work, Sebastiano Santostefano has taken on a daunting task—the integration of psychodynamic, cognitive, and behavioral approaches to the psychotherapeutic treatment of children. Stimulated by his own research and practice over the past thirty years into the vicissitudes of emotion, imagination, thought, and action, the author has created a new developmental-dialectical theory that dissolves the traditional boundaries between ... Read moremind and body, affect and cognition, and reality and fantasy. Every clinician practicing today would be wise to read this book before making another intervention.
Ava L. Siegler PhD, director, Institute for Child, Adolescent, and Family Studies, New York This is a highly original, extremely pragmatic, well-argued, clearly written book. It takes the reader through the development of Dr. Santostefano's thinking and integrative technique for assessing and treating children. His developmental-dialectical model sees every child as a system of interrelated facets in continuous negotiation with one another: for example, surface (conscious) and deep (unconscious), cognition and emotion, fantasy and interactions, meaning and interaction, cognition and interaction. His approach utilizes structured and unstructured interactions in the therapeutic encounter, where structured interactions promote flexibility in cognitive orientation or mode of expression and unstructured interactions aim to revise maladaptive life metaphors. This is a real contribution to the resolution of the divisiveness that now characterizes our discipline between academics and non-academics, and among those of different theoretical orientations who work therapeutically with children and adolescents.
Marsha Levy-Warren, Ph.D. This is psychotherapy integration at its best. Dr. Santostefano has done a superb job of synthesizing theory and research from developmental psychology to provide a conceptual scaffolding that transcends the boundaries of psychoanalytic and cognitive-behavioral approaches to psychotherapy with children and adolescents. He demonstrates a masterful grasp of diverse literatures and a philosophically sophisticated appreciation of the process of theory construction. The result is a theoretically compelling and clinically rich approach that will be of enormous value to those working in the field.
Jeremy D. Safran, Ph.D. Show Less