ABSTRACT
Group therapy with children, like group therapy with adults, can be organized to include a wide range of therapeutic situations, which allows the therapist to prescribe more appropriately to the child's needs. This chapter describes three separate techniques in the group-analytic approach to the kindergarten child, the latency child, and the adolescent. These have been labelled, for convenience, the 'small table', the 'small room', and the 'small circle' methods of analytic group psychotherapy with children. In a residential treatment centre or in-patient ward setting, the institution can be structured along group lines. Such group organizations may include children's groups, staff groups, combined groups of staff and children, and parent groups. The psychotic child in the group situation is likely to develop panic reactions that lead to further autistic retreat into unreality. The special psychological environment having been created, the children, with surprising rapidity, begin to think in psychological terms and to search for the latent behind the manifest content.
