Mother-child and father-child psychology is a psychodynamic - developmental approach to relatively short-term treatment of relational disturbances in young children. The mother-child, father-child and mother-father dyads meet in weekly meetings with the same therapist in the same physical set up.The therapist as a participant observer in recurrent patterns of interactions and relations within the dyads, explicitly conveys to each parent that his/her unique role to their child is to be respected and validated. The approach is practised as a diagnostic assessment tool to help in the placing of pathology, as a preparation, in some cases, for individual therapy for the child or simultaneous treatment for child and parent, and as a treatment of choice for the relational disturbances between parents and their developmentally prelatency children.  This book provides an overview of theoretical similarities and differences in basic aspects of the parent-child therapies, and offers a detailed description of the main features of a new model that enhances the parents’ and the child’s experiential learning.

Miriam Ben-Aaron and J. Harel are the authors of Mother-Child and Father-Child Psychotherapy: A Manual for the Treatment of Relational Disturbances in Childhood, published by Wiley.