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Articles

Children and Their Monsters

Childhood Trauma and Transactional Analysis

Pages 118-127
Published online: 28 Dec 2017
 
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This article offers some reflections on how to work with children who bring their monsters to therapy using play therapy, drawing, and storytelling (Poda, 2011). The author draws on transactional analysis theories of trauma (Clarkson, 1988; Stuthridge, 2006) and script to conceptualize what might be happening with these children at the structural ego state level. Stressing the importance of the therapeutic relationship, an approach is outlined for restructuring ego states using transference, contracting, Berne’s therapeutic operations, and self-reparenting. Case examples illustrate how to conceptualize the child’s relationship to his or her monsters, how the therapist might meet them, and how to domesticate them.

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Author information

Stefano Morena

Author Biography
Stefano Morena is a Provisional Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (psychotherapy) who works as a private practitioner in Bergamo, Italy. He is a teacher at the Istituto di Analisi Transazionale e Gestalt in Turin and scientific coordinator of the master’s course in child and adolescent psychotherapy. He is also a founding member of the International Transactional Analysts for Childhood and Adolescence (ITACA). He can be reached at 8, via Cinquantenario, Dalmine, 24044, Italy; email: . The original version of this article was published in Incontrare il Bambino Giocando: Atti delle Giornate di Studio di Lavarone (R. Pesenti, Ed.), 2012, Bergamo, Edizioni Junior, the proceedings of the ITACA seminar “Meeting Children in Play” held in Lavarone, Italy, in 2001.
 

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