Teodora Rusea

Teodora Rusea - Clinical Psychologist and Psychotherapist using the Psychodrama method, with experience in working with child psychiatric pathology and the impact of chronic diagnoses on the inner life. Throughout my experience, I have learned to see children as pieces of a puzzle, where each member of the family and professional recovery team contributes as an essential part to form the complete picture. And the secret of the perfect combination lies in the professionalism of the therapist, the quality of the services and the man behind them, with all his emotions.

Presentation: The therapeutic relationship. The mourning of the ideal child in transference and countertransference

Abstract:

When we are therapists...we remain people. And people have emotions, they have their own feelings and wounds. They have good days and less good days, but every day we have the enormous responsibility of holding the hand of the parent who dreamed of an ideal child and woke up to the harsh reality of autism spectrum disorder.

The therapeutic relationship, when affected by the intense emotions of parents and therapists, can complicate the achievement of positive results in therapy. Building an authentic relationship with the parents of children with ASD is considerably influenced by the transference-countertransference dynamic, where the awareness and management are the therapist's responsibility. However, for this approach it is necessary to know, understand and manage the emotional universe of the parties involved.

This paper aims to bring useful information about the work of accepting the diagnosis of ASD and the emotional impact for those who go through it with parents, but also practical solutions for emotional analysis and tools for improving the therapist-family relationship, with the main goal of increasing parents' involvement in the therapeutic process of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).