How are children formed to become adults? The child is expected to fall into constricted roles that avoid questioning the way things are, without forming their own sense of being within society. In this sense, children learn that there are societal “elites” who are put into positions in which they will thrive, while “non-elites” are left out; what can be achieved by children whose system is not set up for them to be successful?

Winnicott believed that there is no such thing as a baby, thus there is no such thing as a therapist or a patient; systemic socialization has led both of these individuals to their current roles within the therapeutic relationship. Therapists who serve disadvantaged children often struggle to feel useful since they are combating an institution that is organized for their clients to fail. It can be difficult for therapists who work within these systems to create context for the child, and it is hard to impact these children because of the complexity that categorizes their lives.

Therapy should provide children the chance to explore their own subjectivity. In the United States, therapy is a privilege reserved for the elites, yet children who have access to therapy are often faced with a sort of intervention that values discipline. Child therapy is often viewed as a means to adjust the child toward conformity, an expectation set by the child’s family and school; there is no opportunity for the child to experience their potential. Vivian Paley discussed play in schools and how the institution of public education places underserved children at a disadvantage due to a poor quality of care. This paper aims to touch upon these systems as they work to produce children who are expected to be systemic conformists while exploring the impact of expressive play therapy.

While numerous studies have highlighted the benefits of incorporating animals into therapeutic settings, there remains a gap in literature regarding the specific role of therapy dogs, particularly in child and adolescent therapy. This paper aims to address this gap and discusses the active and dynamic involvement of therapy dogs in the therapeutic process, by exploring the unique role of therapy dogs in facilitating emotional engagement as well as improving, learning and processing for the patient in the psychotherapeutic setting

Distinguishing the concept of "therapy dog" from broader Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT), this paper delves into the unique role observed in clinical practice, emphasizing their potential as active participants rather than mere facilitators of physiological benefits. Drawing from insights gathered during therapy sessions with a trained therapy dog, the paper explores how these animals serve as emotional "containers," offering unconditional positive regard and altering therapy dynamics and allowing the patient to better able engage, learn and process. The analysis is contextualized within established theoretical frameworks, including contributions from Levinson, Fine, Grandin, Bion, Lang, Freud, Winnicott, Klein, and Rosenfield, providing a nuanced understanding of the psychodynamic aspects of animal-assisted therapy.

I suggest that this paper will deepen the understanding of therapy dogs' roles in psychodynamic therapy, potentially, offering insights that may inform therapeutic practice, particularly in addressing the emotional, psychological and psychosocial challenges faced by children and adolescents. By elucidating the psychological benefits of therapy animals within the therapeutic relationship, this study underscores the potential for enhanced outcomes to learning and processing through a psychodynamic and psychoanalytic lens.

This paper addresses the conference themes as it discusses the experiential learning of the author in sessions and the observed improvements to the personal emotional learning of patients

From a new perspective the paper revisits maternal ambivalence, which is one of the well-known and often discussed themes of psychoanalysis. On purpose the problematization is provocative, insofar as it claims that the early theorists of psychoanalysis could not provide comprehensive enough framings and adequate interpretations of maternal ambivalence, because – to a greater or lesser extent – they were entrapped by the idealization of motherhood, i.e. by different biased social patterns, meanings and structural constraints of their times. The proposed argument addresses the relevant model of motherhood in our age, the so-called ‘intensive mothering’, which impacts maternal roles, identities, attitudes, behaviors, and praxes in a much more prevalent way than any other model before. These dynamics, of course, have triggering effects on maternal ambivalence, however due to the sweeping idealization of motherhood also guilt, remorse, and repressions are more common among mothers because of their negative feelings. Rozsika Parker was the very first who recognized this problematic link between maternal ambivalence and idealization of motherhood. She criticized the early theorists of psychoanalysis because of their misleading arguments about maternal ambivalence. Her works are pioneer contributions which are more important today than in the years when they were published. The current paper gives an overview of Parker’s theories, which are often cited by contemporary authors who strive to revise, refine, and clarify her arguments.

This individual presentation utilises extracts from a longer, autoethnographical account of a child psychoanalytic psychotherapist’s work in the UK’s public child mental health services during the pandemic; encompassing the first lockdown when fears around the novel coronavirus were great and pervasive, affecting everyone. The presenter recounts his work organisation’s initial reactions to the task of enabling a workforce to continue to care for child patients with mental illness, including attempts at professional shaming, with parts of the organisation succumbing to psychologically disturbed and infantile processes. He takes a reflexive stance to his recollections to try to understand the effect this had on him, tracing a pathography that increasingly reveals the impact of the austere, post-Brexit socio-political climate within which the pandemic occurred. Through the use of autoethnography, experiential learning, and attempts to understand the impact of the socio-political situation on his workplace, the presentation may be deemed suitable for the conference's theme. It especially contrasts helpful (or mindful) attempts to continue to care for child patients with institutional mindlessness.