Group title:  Working with children and parents

Group leader:  Diane Selinger, PhD

Meeting dates:  Second (or sometimes the first) and fourth Mondays of the month, beginning November 8. 

Meeting times:  7:30 – 9:00 p.m.(CST) via Zoom

Group description:

Therapeutic work with children has been especially challenging during the pandemic. Therapists have needed to adapt their approaches and to work in novel and creative ways on zoom.  This twice monthly group will focus on online and in-person psychotherapeutic work with children, and the many individuals involved in their lives, especially parents and other family members, teachers, and therapeutic teams. The emphasis of the group will be on understanding the individual differences of children within their familial and cultural environment, as participants grapple with their own internal experiences. Therapists will have an opportunity to present in-depth challenging cases to the group in order to understand both the child and themselves.  This group will hopefully help participants integrate at many different levels.  

About the leader:

Diane Selinger, PhD is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice, who works with children, adolescents, and adults. She completed her training at the National Training Program of the National Institute of the Psychotherapies  (NIP). She is a faculty member of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP).

For many years, Dr. Selinger was the mental health consultant at Beth Osten and Associates, a multidisciplinary pediatric clinic. She continues to be the mental health consultant at Soaring Eagle Academy, a DIR® (Developmental, Individual-differences, Relationship-based) school for children with neurodevelopmental disorders and was instrumental in integrating a mental health component into both programs. She is senior faculty at Profectum Academy and was faculty at its DIR Institute predecessor. Diane ’s teaching, presentations, webcasts, and publications have related to therapy with children and their parents.  They have spanned diverse topics, including autism and gender. Dr. Selinger most recently presented a paper this year at the Profectum Conference entitled “An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Therapeutic Power of Symbolic Play.” Her Paper was entitled, “Creating Possibilities: The Intermingling of DIR and Psychodynamic therapies.”