Working With Parents: Establishing the Essential Alliance in Child Psychotherapy and Consultation

(Alan Gurwitt, 1997)
"...a beautifully clear and sensible review of the key questions, issues, parameters, and techniques involved, as well as clinical examples."

(Gertrude Blanck, 1997)
"...a brilliant and elegantly written book..."

(Michael Schwartzman, 1997)
"...a `can't-do-without' book for veteran and beginning child therapists alike."

Book Description
She encourages therapists to approach parents as individuals (not just as parents), and to maintain the same professional perspective in dealing with them that informs the rest of their work. Illustrative case material draws on a considerable range of presenting pictures, from parents who are themselves therapists to those who have no frame of reference for treatment, from parents who seek help when a healthy youngster hits a developmental impasse to those whose lives are shattered by severe pathology and psychic isolation in their children. Integrating theory and technique to provide the practitioner with the tools to elicit collaboration from parents instead of obstruction, Siskind makes it possible for child therapists to sustain the interest, curiosity, neutrality, and empathy that are preconditions to effective treatment.

Card catalog description
Establishing a working alliance with parents is essential to the successful treatment of children. How to create and sustain that alliance - how to engage parents in the treatment process and overcome the challenges built into the ambiguity of parent/therapist interdependence, how to have an impact on parenting styles and develop partnerships to foster children's growth - is the problem Diana Siskind explores with the authority of an educator and the wisdom of an active clinician. Integrating theory and technique to provide the practitioner with the tools to elicit collaboration from parents instead of obstruction, Siskind makes it possible for child therapists to sustain the interest, curiosity, neutrality, and empathy that are preconditions to effective treatment.

About the Author
Diana Siskind, formerly a senior staff member at the Child Development Center of the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services, has held faculty positions in the doctoral program in psychology at the City University of New York and the doctoral program at the Smith College School for Social Work. Author of The Child Patient and the Therapeutic Process: A Psychoanalytic, Developmental, Object Relations Approach and contributor of book chapters, journal articles, and professional papers, Mrs. Siskind is currently on the faculty of the New York School for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and maintains a private practice that encompasses consultation with parents and supervision in addition to the treatment of adults and children. She is a member and Distinguished Practitioner in Social Work of the National Academy of Practice.


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Establishing a working alliance with parents is essential to the successful treatment of children. How to create and sustain that alliance - how to engage parents in the treatment process and overcome the challenges built into the ambiguity of parent/therapist interdependence, how to have an impact on parenting styles and develop partnerships to foster children's growth - is the problem Diana Siskind explores with the authority of an educator and the wisdom of an active clinician. Integrating theory and technique to provide the practitioner with the tools to elicit collaboration from parents instead of obstruction, Siskind makes it possible for child therapists to sustain the interest, curiosity, neutrality, and empathy that are preconditions to effective treatment.


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