Extending Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis to Special Populations: Regulation-Focused Psychotherapy for Children (RFP-C) and Transference-Focused Psychotherapy for Adolescents (TFP-A)

In the last decade clinicians and researchers have developed Regulation-Focused Psychotherapy for Children (RFP-C) and Transference-Focused Psychotherapy for Adolescents (TFP-A), two manualized, evidence-based, time-limited treatments derived from child and adolescent psychoanalysis. These therapies are designed to treat special, complex patient populations including children with severe externalizing behaviors and adolescents with nascent or actual severe personality disorders, youth thought to be beyond the reach of traditional psychoanalysis or thought to benefit from modifications of standard psychoanalytic technique to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of psychoanalytic treatment. Despite the effectiveness of psychoanalysis, manualized cognitive-behavioral approaches like parent management training and dialectical behavior therapy are currently the most popular treatments for these patients, partially because there are too few child and adolescent psychoanalysts to meet demand. The authors describe RFP-C and TFP-A and illustrate their effectiveness using clinical material. The authors advocate for wider acceptance and utilization of these two broadly teachable manualized treatments by the psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic communities to extend the reach of psychoanalysis to severely suffering patients who can reap the unique benefits of these essentially psychoanalytic approaches.