ABSTRACT
Regulation-Focused Psychotherapy for Children (RFP-C) with externalizing behaviors owes a debt to the original work of Bert Bornstein and Paullina Kernberg with children and adolescents, as well as other authors of dynamic treatment models such as Barbara Milrod and colleagues. The avoidance of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can be conceptualized to be similar to avoidance of external phobic situations. Children with externalizing behaviors exhibit deficits primarily in two domains: Negative Valence Systems and Systems for Social Processes. Given this state of affairs, it seems timely to provide clinicians with a systematic individual psychotherapy as an alternative to Parent Management Training (PMT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and psychotropic medication for children who exhibit disruptive behavior problems. RFP-C's foundation, within the Research Domain Criteria (Rod) approach, can be hypothesized to target circuit-level processes between prefrontal, limbic, and parasympathetic systems. In the language of psychodynamics, the clinician will address the defenses the child utilizes to ward off painful emotions in the transference.
