Language: English
Level of audience: All

Berne thought of Transactional Analysis as applied to adults in the group setting. However, in his texts there are many references to developmental age in particular in his book “What do you say after you say hello?”.

After him, a number of authors dealt with the application of TA to work with children, with very interesting and innovative articles – Muriel James, Fanita English, Leonard Campos, Jim Allen – but without this branch being particularly successful.

In Italy there is a long tradition of TA therapeutic work with children, started by Maria Teresa Romanini, in the 1980s, who greatly expanded Bernian theory and made it more suitable for use with children and adolescents, both by modifying a number of concepts and by developing therapeutic techniques.

After a brief historical introduction highlighting the roots of working with children, in the workshop I will provide an overview of the characteristics of therapeutic intervention in the developmental age to demonstrate how much TA is effective and powerful with children and their families and also to share the expertise that has been developed by many colleagues over the past 40 years, so that TA can also spread as psychotherapy applied to children.

Clinical vignettes will be used to explain diagnosis, contracts, treatment phases and techniques.

The workshop will be interactive and experiential with large group and smaller group processes and exercises.

Due attention will be given to the safety of participants in any exercises.