Working with Parents in Child Psychotherapy

Elisa Bronfman, PhD, is senior staff psychologist at Boston Children's Hospital, where she specializes in supporting children, teens, and families coping with medical illness. Since joining the hospital in 1998, she has provided training, supervision, and individual and family psychotherapy, and has run numerous patient and caregiver groups targeting a range of child issues. Dr. Bronfman is also Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is coauthor of the Atypical Maternal Behavior Instrument for Assessment and Classification (AMBIANCE), a research tool used to assess parent–infant attachment, on which she provides training nationally and internationally, and of journal articles and books on a range of topics.

Johanna D. Sagarin, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Assumption University and a psychologist in private practice. Previously, Dr. Sagarin was Vice President of Children’s Friend, in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she directed their community mental health clinic for youth and families for close to two decades. In this setting, she helped develop specialized programs in grief and in working with LGBTQIA+ youth and their families. She has supervised and consulted with many clinicians, has been active in university-level teaching for many years, and has given numerous trainings and workshops for professionals and the public.