Introduction to Regulation Focused Psychotherapy for Children

This workshop provides an introduction to the theory and practice of Regulation-Focused Psychotherapy for Children (RFP-C). RFP-C is a manualized, psychodynamic intervention for children with externalizing problems, designed to help children and their families understand the meaning of disruptive behavior and to increase effective emotion regulation. In this workshop, you will learn the basic therapeutic techniques in RFP-C used with children who present with disruptive and defiant behavior, irritability, and emotional dysregulation. Briefcase vignettes and discussions will help illustrate techniques that will enhance your clinical practice. The relevance of RFP-C to other treatment modalities and methods of integration will also be highlighted.​Website: www.rfp-c.com​

Presenter Bios​

Leon Hoffman, M.D., Psychiatrist and Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist; Training and Supervising Analyst in adult, child, and adolescent analysis, co-director, Pacella Research Center at NYPSI (New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute); faculty Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Chief Psychiatrist/Psychoanalyst, West End Day School in NYC. He is the author of Manual for Regulation-Focused Psychotherapy for Children with Externalizing Behaviors (RFP-C): A Psychodynamic Approach, co-written with Timothy Rice and Tracy Prout. An RCT has been completed at Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology in New York, with Tracy Prout as PI (https://www.rfp-c.com).

Among several papers from this work, findings from a pilot study have been published in the American Journal of Psychotherapy in 2019. He has written about the impact of Berta Bornstein’s ideas on contemporary treatment of children with disruptive behaviors and the value of the utilization of Wilma Bucci’s linguistic measures for understanding the process in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.​

Timothy Rice, M.D. is currently a candidate at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research in New York, NY.  He is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he focuses on inpatient child and adolescent psychiatry and medical student education.  He is co-chair of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry's Task Force on Men's Mental Health, where he focuses on child, adolescent, and young adult populations and on fathering.​

Tracy A. Prout, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of psychology at the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology at Yeshiva University. She teaches psychodynamic psychotherapy in the School-Clinical Child Combined Doctoral Program, supervises advanced graduate students in the psychodynamic psychotherapy practicum, and leads the psychodynamic psychotherapy lab at Ferkauf. She earned a certificate in psychodynamic psychotherapy from the Institute for Psychoanalytic Education at NYU Medical Center. She serves as the co-chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Fellowship Committee and as co-chair of the Research Committee of APA’s Division 39. Dr. Prout is a principal investigator for several studies related to RFP-C and supervises all graduate students who work on these projects.