Alicia Lieberman and other collaborators developed a method called Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), an evidence-based treatment for traumatized children up to the age of five. CPP is a relationship-based treatment for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers who are experiencing or at risk for mental health problems. These disorders are typically caused by exposure to traumatic events, environmental adversity, parental mental illness, inappropriate parenting practices, or temperamental differences between parent and child.

Treatment begins with four to six assessment sessions. This introductory phase constitutes the basic treatment phase and includes individual sessions with the parent, with the aim of creating a joint treatment plan based on a shared understanding of the child's needs.

As part of the treatment, CPP uses a variety of intervention methods such as: translating behavioral meanings, using play, physical contact and language, child-protective behavior tools, insight-oriented interpretation, addressing traumatic memories, eliciting beneficial memories, and emotional support. CPP has a psychoanalytic orientation, but it is considered an integrative treatment that combines different perspectives such as Bowlby's attachment theory, developmental psychopathology, the body of knowledge of adult-child trauma, and

In this conversation, Aner Guvrin and Sharon Ziv-Beiman will discuss with Alicia Lieberman the principles of CPP, trauma at a young age, the reconstruction of the parent's trauma in their relationship with the baby, types of trauma and their impact on mental health, various intervention methods, and the challenges of open conversation with children and parents about traumas in the family.

Alicia P. Lieberman , Ph.D., a pioneer in the Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) model—a relationship-based, attachment-based, and trauma-informed treatment of children and their parents—holds the Irving B. Harris Chair, Professor and Vice Chair for Faculty Development in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSF, and Director of the Pediatric Trauma Research Program at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. She directs the Early Trauma Treatment Network, a center of SAMHSA’s National Children’s Traumatic Stress Network, and is a member of the Early Childhood Mental Health Consortium, a federal grant to create an early childhood mental health workforce in ten rural counties in Northern California and other states with large rural populations.

She is the lead developer of Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), an evidence-based treatment for traumatized children ages birth to five, widely used nationally and internationally as an evidence-based treatment for traumatized young children and their parents or caregivers. Her research includes treatment outcome studies in pregnancy and with traumatized young children from low-income and underrepresented minority groups. She is the author of The Emotional Life of the Toddler, described as “groundbreaking” and now in its second edition to mark its twenty-fifth anniversary. She has authored numerous books and professional articles on pregnancy and early childhood mental health. Her work has been translated into several languages, including Arabic and Hebrew, and serves to increase understanding and foster dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians working with bereaved and traumatized children and their families.

Born in Paraguay and professionally trained in Israel and the United States, she has a cross-cultural background as a Latina-Jewish, committed to improving the quality of care for low-income and minority children and families. She serves on national organizational boards and in 2019 was appointed to the California Early Childhood Policy Council. She has received numerous awards, including in recent years the Renee Spitz Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Association for Infant Mental Health (WAIMH), the 2016 Hero Award from the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the 2017 Child Award from the Sims-Mann Institute, the 2018 Blanche Ittelson Award from the Global Alliance for Behavioral Health and Social Justice, the 2019 Paulina Kernberg Award from Weill Cornell Medical School, and the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award from Zero to Three: The National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Their Families.