Freitag, 24. Oktober 2025

«Did you jump or were you pushed? Considerations of technique in the treatment of children.»

Valli Shaio Kohon (London), Psychoanalytikerin (BPAS / IPA), Kinder- und Jugendlichenanalytikerin (IPA)


Moderation: Andrea Preiss, Dr. med., Psychoanalytikerin SGPsa / IPA (Zürich)


This paper explores the challenges of maintaining an analytic stance in psychoanalytic work with children, where the analyst is continuously pulled between observation, interpretation, and the necessity of action. Drawing on the work of Michael Parsons, Winnicott, Rodrigué, and others, it highlights how the child’s use of play, bodily communication, and developmental pressures challenge the analytic frame. Through detailed clinical material, particularly the case of a five-year-old boy, the paper illustrates how the analyst’s role oscillates between containment, interpretation, and unavoidable intervention, often under the pressure of strong transference – countertransference dynamics. It emphasizes the risks of slipping into non-analytic roles – teacher, parent, social worker, or detective – when confronted with acting out, enactments, or sexually provocative behaviours. Instead, the analyst must sustain what Rodrigué calls »ludic attention,” entering the child’s imaginative register before translating it into verbal interpretation. The discussion underscores how the analytic setting itself is precarious, threatened both by the child’s actions and by the analyst’s defensive responses, yet remains the essential space for the child’s symbolic work. Ultimately, the paper argues that the task of the child analyst is to preserve the possibility of analytic play within the hazards of the clinical encounter, bearing the uncertainties of treatment while resisting the temptation to abandon the analytic position.

Valli Shaio Kohon, is a Psychoanalyst (BPAS / IPA), Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She is trained as a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic and later as a psychoanalyst at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London, where she is now a Fellow and Child Analyst. She co-founded the Brisbane Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies during her time in Australia, where she taught and worked extensively across clinical disciplines.Upon returning to London, she worked for six years at the Portman Clinic, a centre for the psychoanalytic treatment of individuals with perverse or violent presentations. For over four decades, she has taught on numerous adult and child psychotherapy trainings in the UK and internationally, including in Paris, Lisbon, Warsaw, and across Latin America. She currently works in private practice in London with adults and adolescents and continues to teach and supervise at the Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Die Veranstaltung ist öffentlich, anerkannt von SGPP und PSY-Verbänden, 2 Credits. 

jeweils von 20.00 – 21.30 Uhr

• im Freud-Institut Zürich
• vor Ort: unentgeltlich
• Bestellung Videorecording der Vorträge, passwortgeschützer Zugang verfügbar ab einer Woche nach dem Vortrag: CHF 30.–, CHF 15 .– für FIZ-Mitglieder und Gast-Mitglieder des FIZ
• anerkannt von SGPP und PSY-Verbänden, je 2 Credits
• Einheit 8 gemäss Rahmenplan

Öffentliche Veranstaltung im Freud-Institut Zürich, Anmeldung erforderlich: anmeldung@freud-institut.ch.