PCSP is a peer reviewed, open-access journal and database. It provides innovative, quantitative and qualitative knowledge about psychotherapy process and outcome. PCSP is published by the National Register of Health Service Psychologists.
January, 2025 -- see our newest case, Regulation Focused Psychotherapy for Children (RFP-C) with Externalizing Behaviors: Comparing the Successful Case of "Jack," and the Unsuccessful Case of "Oliver"
Click on the upper left button for the “Newest Case" or the button labeled "Current."
Click on "CE Exams On Case Studies" below for an Exam on the current issue's case study and on past issues' case studies.
Read below for the Editor's Annoucement of the issue.
The Case Studies
January 26, 2025 -- FROM THE EDITOR
ANNOUNCING THE PUBLICATION OF OUR 69th ISSUE (Vol. 21, Module 1)
Regulation Focused Psychotherapy for Children (RFP-C) with Externalizing Behaviors: Comparing the Successful Case of "Jack" and the Unsuccessful Case of "Oliver"
*** Carly Brooks, Independent Practice, New York, NY
*** Tatianna Kufferath-Lin, IMPACT Psychological Services, Beacon, NY
*** Tracy Prout, IMPACT Psychological Services, Beacon, NY
*** Mariagrazia Di Giuseppe University of Rome Tor Vergata
*** Jordan Bate, Yeshiva University, Bronx, NY
*** Katie Aafjes-Van Doorn, NYU Shanghai, Shanghai, China
*** Leon Hoffman, New York Psychoanalytic Society, New York, NY
*** Timothy Rice, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, New York, NY
Commentaries
*** Antonella Cirasola, Anna Freud & University College London, London, England
*** Patrick Kigin, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ & Toni Hembree-Kigin, Independent Practice, Chandler, AZ
EDITOR'S NOTE
Regulation Focused Psychotherapy for Children (RFP-C) is a manualized, time-limited, psychodynamic approach for children who experience challenges with emotion regulation and demonstrate externalizing behavior problems. In research settings, like the present two cases, the treatment takes place over ten weeks and includes 16 sessions with the child and four with the child’s parents. RFP-C has been found to be effective in a number of research studies, including a randomized clinical trial (RCT).
The current study utilized a dual case study method to compare psychotherapy outcomes and process in RFP-C between a successful case (“Jack”) and an unsuccessful case (“Oliver”) drawn from the RCT. The detailed qualitative and quantitative data in the study were employed to compare the cases on (a) psychotherapy processes; (b) the defense mechanisms of the parents; (c) the parents’ parental attachment classifications; and (d) the therapists’ countertransference ratings.
Results indicated that many variables contributed to successful versus unsuccessful treatment outcomes, including but not limited to (a) the child’s spontaneity; (b) the child’s active participation and emotional expression throughout treatment; (c) themes of child play; (d) the therapist’s countertransference; (e) the child and parental defense mechanisms; and (f) the parental attachment styles.
In the issue, Commentaries and a Response to the Commentaries by the target case authors intriguingly explore a variety of issues, including the methodology of how the cases were selected and how the qualitative data were analyzed; the central role of the therapeutic alliance in helping children address and master problematic feeling states; and a contrast between the RFP-C psychodynamic approach used in the two cases as compared with Parent Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), the behavioral approach widely and typically used to treat children externalizing problems.
More specifically regarding this latter topic, in the Commentary by Kigin and Hembree-Kigin, who are experts in PCIT, the authors describe in detail contrasting PCIT case formulations and treatment plans for Jack and Oliver. In their Response, Prout et al., the authors of the RFP-C cases, address the issues Kigin and Hembree-Kigin raise in detail. Prout et al. end with a proposal for how the two theoretical approaches might be employed in an integrated way with different types of clients.
*** For a Table of Contents and pdf links to the articles, click on the upper left button labeled "Newest Case" or the button labeled "Current."
