Across the Divide in Chicago

Jacqueline J. Gotthold, Psy.D.

I speak for my fellow panelists when I say: "It never gets old." For the past nine years, Mark Smaller, Ph.D, Rosalind Chaplin Kindler, MFA, Iris Hilke, MA, Dorienne Sorter, PhD ( a recent addition), and I have enjoyed giving panels at the Psychology of the Self annual conference addressing issues related to child treatment. For the past few years, as reflected by our inclusion of Dr. Sorter, we presented panel discussions that addressed overarching clinical concerns for both child and adult therapists. This year's panel, as Rosalind Kindler said, was a "reflection of something new and exciting happening in the worlds of adult and child psychoanalytic treatment".

Our panel, "Eloquence in the Non-Verbal Realm: A Comparison of the use of Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication in Child and Adult Treatment, focused on the confluence of contemporary self psychological theories and the introduced concepts, such as implicit relational knowing developed by the Process of Change Boston Study Group. We were pleased that Dr. Smaller gave us a 'new' neurobiological perspective—new wine in old bottles.

As the panel commented on Iris Hilke's engaging, eloquent and exciting case presentation, the implicit, non-verbal goings on child psychotherapists are so familiar with were made explicit. Putting our explicit and declarative best feet forward, we elucidated the dimension of implicit relational knowing that impacted the treatment dyad, we observed the interweaving of the verbal and non-verbal realms of the treatment and we drew analogies to our work with adult patients. Child 'people' and adult 'people' can enhance each other's 'ways of being' with their respective patients.

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