ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on work with parents of children with severe psychopathology, diagnosed between 3 and 4 years of age, within an institutional setting. Parents' understanding of the ways their children feel and behave is extremely important for the development of their children and for the cooperation needed between the child's therapists and themselves (therapeutic alliance). The psychoanalytic approach to early childhood psychoses is considered to be out of fashion, especially among American and British scientists, as many of the discussions during the past decades were focused mainly on the contribution of either organic or psychogenic factors to the aetiology of early infantile autism and childhood psychosis. The professional working with parents of psychotic children has to face material similar to that produced in any therapeutic work relating to mental functioning: ideas, representations, thoughts, fantasies, feelings, acts with a symbolic character, or acts as attempts at "acting out".
