This handbook provides a comprehensive review of the impact of fathers on child development from prenatal years to age five. It examines the effects of the father-child relationship on the child's neurobiological development; hormonal, emotional and behavioral regulatory systems; and on the systemic embodiment of experiences into the child's mental models of self, others, and self-other relationships. The volume reflects two perspectives guiding research with fathers: Identifying positive and negative factors that influence early childhood development, specifying child outcomes, and emphasizing cultural diversity in father involvement; and examining multifaceted, specific approaches to guide father research. Key topics addressed include: Direct assessment of father parenting (rather than through maternal reports). The effects of father presence (in contrast to father absence). The full diversity of father involvement. Father's impact on gender role differentiation. Father's role in triadic interactions of family dynamics. Father involvement in psychotherapeutic family interventions. This handbook draws from converging perspectives about the role of fathers in very early child development, summarizes what is known, and, within each chapter, draws attention to the critical questions that need to be answered in coming decades. The Handbook of Fathers and Child Development is a must-have resource for researchers, graduate students, and clinicians, therapists, and other professionals in infancy and early child development, social work, public health, developmental and clinical child psychology, pediatrics, family studies, neuroscience, juvenile justice, child and adolescent psychiatry, school and educational psychology, anthropology, sociology, and all interrelated disciplines.

Manualisation of psychodynamic psychotherapy poses a formidable challenge, but may prove indispensable in the effort to disseminate short-term psychodynamic treatments to a wider patient community. In the case of childhood emotional disturbances, the need for widely available treatments is particularly pressing especially once we pay heed to the emotional turmoil also underpinning many behavioural problems. Short-term Psychoanalytic Child Therapy (PaCT) is an emotion-oriented, play-focused treatment that aims to help the child to relinquish rigidly held maladaptive defence mechanisms that give rise to symptoms and interfere with healthy development. PaCT comprises twenty to twenty-five psychotherapeutic sessions conducted in alternating settings (parent-child, child alone, parents alone), in which a relational theme is uncovered and worked through. Here, the authors have created a manual for PaCT, successfully retaining the complexity of each treatment whilst making the application accessible for a greater range of settings. This manual will be of use to trainees and practising therapists alike.

This handbook provides a comprehensive review of the impact of fathers on child development from prenatal years to age five. It examines the effects of the father-child relationship on the child's neurobiological development; hormonal, emotional and behavioral regulatory systems; and on the systemic embodiment of experiences into the child's mental models of self, others, and self-other relationships. The volume reflects two perspectives guiding research with fathers: Identifying positive and negative factors that influence early childhood development, specifying child outcomes, and emphasizing cultural diversity in father involvement; and examining multifaceted, specific approaches to guide father research. Key topics addressed include: Direct assessment of father parenting (rather than through maternal reports). The effects of father presence (in contrast to father absence). The full diversity of father involvement. Father's impact on gender role differentiation. Father's role in triadic interactions of family dynamics. Father involvement in psychotherapeutic family interventions. This handbook draws from converging perspectives about the role of fathers in very early child development, summarizes what is known, and, within each chapter, draws attention to the critical questions that need to be answered in coming decades. The Handbook of Fathers and Child Development is a must-have resource for researchers, graduate students, and clinicians, therapists, and other professionals in infancy and early child development, social work, public health, developmental and clinical child psychology, pediatrics, family studies, neuroscience, juvenile justice, child and adolescent psychiatry, school and educational psychology, anthropology, sociology, and all interrelated disciplines.

Brief Psychoanalytic Child Therapy (PaCT) comprises 20-25 psychotherapeutic sessions conducted in alternating settings (parent-child together, child and parent, individually). During these sessions, therapist, parent, and child seek to identify and modify the core conflictual theme underlying the relationship, which we term the Triangle of Psychodynamic constellations (ToP).Despite the challenges of manualizing psychodynamic treatments without purging them of their complexity, the authors have sought to create PaCT in manual form. They thus hope to ease the application and accessibility of psychonanalytic treatments for a greater range of settings (e.g. utility for trainees) as well as help systematically evaluate the treatment s outcome in controlled trials. Their treatment approach is rooted in the assumption that children with affective disorders fail to express their aggressive impulses interpersonally in their primary caregiver-relationships, but instead turn them inwards against the self. This induces an intrapsychic conflict whereby the object is spared, at the expense of (persecution of) the self, thereby disrupting the latter s developmental progress. They invoke both early models of depressogenesis by Karl Abraham, Sigmund Freud and Sandor Rado, stressing the role of object-loss, dismay, and ensuing anger, as well as more recent complementary formulations, such as that of Mentzos (2006) spanning the three conflictual areas of real and psychic object loss, turning of the aggression against the self and the disruption of narcissistic regulation . Likewise, Blatt s (1974, 2005) theory on adult depression (anaclitic vs. introjective) is embedded within the approach, which suggests that depression may signify either conflictual or structural aetiologies."

Unter dem Gesamtthema des UEbergangs werden verschiedene Aspekte des Elternwerdens und der kindlichen Entwicklung dargestellt. Grundlegende Zusammenhange zwischen Immunsystem und Gehirn bilden die Basis eines neuen psychosomatischen Verstandnisses, das durch aktuelle Forschungsergebnisse der Interaktion von Genetik und Umwelt erganzt wird. Elternwerden und die damit verbundenen seelischen Anpassungsprozesse bilden wiederum die Grundlage einer gelingenden Eltern-Kind-Interaktion. Die Orientierung am Kind und seinen Bedurfnissen ist der Leitfaden fur eine kindgerechte Erziehung und Erziehungsunterstutzung. Fur den UEbergang vom Sauglings- zum Kleinkindalter werden die psychophysiologischen und entwicklungspathologischen Mechanismen beschrieben und eine Grundlage zur Entscheidung angeboten, ob eine Elterntherapie, Eltern-Kind-Therapie oder eine Kindtherapie angezeigt ist.