Psychodynamic perspectives on children with a history of early adversity – Theory, research, and clinical practice

This PhD project is part of the research group Clinical Psychology at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences. The project is part of a wider research project that was established thanks to the fund of Dr. Pierre Vereecken. This fund arose from the legacy of the Antwerp psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and child psychotherapist Dr. Pierre Vereecken at KU Leuven and postulates two goals. This doctoral project starts from these two objectives and therefore involves two components:

The first component involves a study into evolutions within psychodynamic therapy for children especially focusing on the evolutions in therapy with the most vulnerable children in our society, meaning children whose life was marked by fractures in the continuity of care, such as foster and adoptive children. Founders of the psychodynamic work in Flanders are among others, Pierre Vereecken, Wilfried Smis and Gaston Cluckers. They were inspired by Anglo-Saxon training and therapy models. Specifically, this component starts with a study on the writings of Dr. Pierre Vereecken on the one hand, in which he had special attention for the 'technique' of the therapeutic process and on the other hand with an interview study on the network of colleagues who have worked with him. The interviews will be analyzed in a qualitative way.

The second component involves a study on the development of these vulnerable children and relies specifically on the children and parents of the Leuven Adoption Study (LAS). The Leuven Adoption Study has been following adoptive families for seven years and had currently started the tenth measurement moment. The first measurement (T1) took place before the actual arrival of the adopted child. During this time parents were questioned about their experience with the adoption process using the Adoption Expectation Interview (AEI). We want to gain insight into how these parents experienced the transition to parenthood and how they experienced the adoption process. For the analysis of these interviews the 'Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is thought to be appropriate. Findings from this analysis can be transferred to the mother-child observations that took place two weeks after the arrival of the child in the family (T2). These observations are quantitatively scored on the basis of the Emotional Availability Scales. The aim is thus to examine the influence of emotional availability during a parent-child observation on later development factors in the child. This is, inter alia, considered the relationship between the EAS and the temperament observations with the child respectively six (T3) and twelve (T4) months after arrival in the family.

For this project we thus appeal to both qualitative and quantitative data analysis methods with the aim to gain insight into developments in the psychodynamic therapy process for the most vulnerable children in our society and to contribute to knowledge about the development of these children.