Exploring Contemporary Issues with Child & Adolescent Work

Exploring Contemporary Issues with Child & Adolescent Work
Confirmed

The Child & Adolescent Standing Committee, APAS (Australian Psychoanalytical Society)


Exploring Contemporary Issues from Different Perspectives with Child & Adolescent Work


The conference will speak to the contemporary challenges psychoanalysis faces when working with children and adolescents where social freedoms of expression and technology have brought about profound changes to the way we feel, think, work and live.

As professionals working with children and adolescents, we come across these experiences in our place of work, whether in educational or clinical settings. These contemporary ways provide an opportunity to re-examine and re-think what we see in our students, patients and the like.

The first paper will consider how the psychoanalyst who may not have had the freedom to explore their gender and may have been raised with more rigid expectations relates to adolescent patients’ greater openness to gender diversity. The paper discusses central theoretical ideas regarding adolescence including the analyst’s receptivity to the countertransference.

The second paper focuses on working with parents of adolescents and the opportunity and challenges of opening a thinking parental space. This space offers a chance to work on and work through the internal and external issues confronting the adolescent, the family and the parents and invites the parents to be curious about their own internal world and its impact on themselves and their adolescent.

The third paper centres on what it means to work with a fragile child whose conditions were difficult enough at the start due to environmental circumstances and then with the added issues created by working remotely. The paper gives us a real sense of the struggle to simply allow treatment to happen at all; as well as providing discussion of the technical modifications and the consequent clinical impact.

Download a flyer about the event here.
Download full programme here.

Who can attend: The event is open to all professionals interested in this topic.
Registration: Registration is now open.
For enquiries: Please contact Pam Shein: [email protected]
When
16/05/2026
Where
Sydney In person AUSTRALIA