Psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children: current research trends and challenges.

To advance the field of dynamic child psychotherapy research, a shift in emphasis from questions examining treatment outcome only, to those that address treatment process, is required. Child psychoanalytic psychotherapy provides a unique set of factors for assessing what occurs between analyst and child in the consulting room and for exploring the link between the inner life of the child and symptomatic behavior. Continued development of rigorous methods for collecting and evaluating clinical data is needed. Past and current efforts in this area are presented in the description of child psychoanalytic research projects.