ABSTRACT
Therapy with the child should work through the child's central conflict, improving his defences and increasing the flexibility of his representations and conflict resolution. The rule is that in free association and in free play in the psychoanalytic work with the child, material emerges to indicate unresolved developmental themes and ongoing conflicts. A precise knowledge of the psychodynamic basic conflicts and the defences mounted against them is necessary in order for the therapist to recognise unresolved conflicts, one-sided accentuations, or fixations of the personality, or rigid defence mechanisms in the child's material. The rule is that in free association and in free play in the psychoanalytic work with the child, material emerges to indicate unresolved developmental themes and ongoing conflicts. The psychodynamic hypothesis, consolidated in a focus formulation, should depict the way in which interpersonal conflicts between parents and child intersect with the child's own intrapsychic conflicts.
