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Guidance and counseling

Notes solved together. Rather than a “quick fix,” psychoanalysis helps a child or adolescent overcome
troubles and developmental delays while building strength and resilience.
• Times to Consider Child Psychoanalysis
• Parental Involvement is Crucial to Success
Depression

Episodes of depression are characterized by feelings of guilt, social withdrawal, difficulty
concentrating, tearfulness and shame, and by physical manifestations, such as either having a very
poor appetite and difficulty sleeping with accompanying anxiety and agitation, or by eating and
sleeping much more than usual, with a sense of having very little energy. Sometimes upon awakening,
a depressed person feels that it is almost impossible to face the day and has a gnawing sense of
dread and a feeling of physical heaviness.
Are aware that a propensity to this kind of depression often has genetic and biochemical origins.
Early problems in mood regulation can negatively impact a child’s relationships, personality
development and sense of self-regard. Additionally, traumas in early childhood such as abuse,
neglect, separation or loss can impact a child psychologically and neurobiologically and cause a
predisposition to depressive illness.
Treat the impact that depressive illness has on an individual’s personality and sense of himself.
Often people with depression suffer from feelings of vulnerability and shame and become frustrated
about their difficulties, envious towards others who are appear to be more outgoing and untroubled.
They can feel guilty about these feelings, with significant inhibitions as a result. help people with
depression to recognize and deal with their excessive guilt, shame, humiliation, anger and other
painful feelings. They help the depressed individual understand the impact that depression has had
on their personality development and relationships.
Some depressed people are very sensitive to slights, disappointments in others injuries to their self
esteem and have become overly prone to humiliation and anger as a result. Psychoanalysts can help
them understand the early experiences that led to these sensitivities and assist them in developing
a more resilient sense of self. Additionally, troubling early relationships may sometimes lead to
lifelong feelings of inner deadness, sadness, disconnectedness or emptiness that can coalesce into a
later life depression. Psychoanalytic understanding often helps the person with depression avoid
the vicious emotional cycles that can cause or contribute depressive episodes.

Eating Disorders
Individuals with eating disorders are overly preoccupied with the foods they eat, when and how
they eat them, and their weight and appearance, sometimes to a life-threatening degree.
Bulimia is characterized by binge eating followed by purging, often through vomiting, excessive
exercise, extreme fasting or laxative abuse. Anorexics are so fearful of gaining weight that the put
themselves on a starvation diet. At the other extreme, the obese eat themselves into a life-threatening
state. In general, eating disorders take one of the basic needs for human survival and turn it into a
means for personal extinction.
Because these disorders tend to first surface in adolescence, and because the persons they affect are
mostly female, they may arise in part from anxiety about meeting society’s impossibly high standard
of the perfect body or from conflicts about sexuality. The psychoanalytic perspective focuses on the
particular form of the disorder and what it might mean for the individual. Several studies have
found that treatments relying on medication and behavioral therapy alone are effective for only 40
to 60 percent of patients; psychoanalysts hold that a deeper, personal understanding can lead to
both mental and physical health.

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