Interpreting Children’s Defenses Promotes Emotion Regulation Development

Child analysis has a long history of helping emotionally dysregulated children. A core analytic intervention is the interpretation of children’s defenses against painful affects. There are observed parallels between defense mechanisms from the psychoanalytic tradition and implicit emotion regulation from the contemporary affective neurosciences. This article positions defense analysis as promoting the development of the emotion regulation system through addressing developmental delays of deficit or conflict and restoring adaptive neurophysiological functioning. The theoretical foundation of this proposal, inclusive of the developmental impact of early life adversity on the emotion regulation system, supports a clinical vignette to illustrate defense analysis as a restorative procedure. Given the broad transdiagnostic importance of emotion regulation in disorders of childhood and adolescence, as well as in those of adulthood, the interpretation of defenses stands as an important skillset within a contemporary neuroscientific surround.