Abstract
Integrates recent infant research and psychoanalytic practice with children. Babies seem more agentic and autonomous and more relationally sensitive and responsive than previously thought. When the child is viewed neither as victim and deprivant nor as a bundle of impulses that needs to be tamed, but as an agentic force within an interpersonal matrix, notions of what is central in treatment change accordingly. Central to work with children are the understanding and use of (1) transference and countertransference issues as they emerge both in fantasy play and more directly in relationship with the analyst and (2) issues of parental projective identification. Clinical examples of 2 boys (aged 4 and 7 yrs) and 2 girls (aged 5 and 8 yrs) are provided. (APA PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)