The new paradigm of child psychoanalysis: the importance of 'procedural' in an integrated therapeutic approach

The text outlines a new paradigm from child psychoanalysis, called the "Integrated Therapeutic Approach". The model is born within the theory of complex systems and takes into account infant research data and neuro-scientific findings on procedural memory. It is a psychoanalytically oriented intervention on the different components of the parent-child system, a system that extends to other people significant to the child and of which the analyst becomes part. The clinical intervention, articulated on several levels (interactive, relational and intrapsychic), is characterized by the involvement of the parents in the therapeutic process, by the elasticity of the technique and by the use of play as an expression of the child-parent-analyst system. In the clinical cartoons proposed, the children in session apparently play the same game, but with very different meanings in each individual case. The analyst does not interpret the content of the game, but the therapeutic work takes place largely on an implicit, procedural level of "how to play and be together". Every change in the way of playing signals and expresses a change in the child parent-analyst system.