ABSTRACT
This chapter explores issues that may arise in situations where a child's participation in family therapy may seem to present some risk to the need for a secure experience of confidentiality within the child's individual psychotherapy. A fresh approach to the parallel processes is described and examined in terms of psychoanalytic theory and of outcome in the case history of a young girl. In establishing an integrated approach to individual and family therapy, practitioners are thinking in terms of a partnership between two equally valid and complementary concepts. The outcome of an assessment frequently results in a child being taken into individual psychotherapy while the family is seen collaterally in family therapy. The family presented at that time as apparently well-functioning but inhibited group who appeared to cope using denial, isolation, and avoidance. An approach taking back into the family therapy sessions the transferences to adolescent ward staff of the adolescent in-patient has drawn attention to some of these issues.
