Commentary: How Child's Play Impacts Executive Function-Related Behaviors

In a recent review Shaheen (2014) surveys evidence-based and popular programs that are designed to advance the development of executive function in children. In this commentary I propose that psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children is an additional program and therapeutic orientation that promotes executive function development. In support of this proposal I review the executive function construct, the relationship of emotion regulation to executive function, and the observed similarities between the implicit branch of emotion regulation system and defense mechanisms (Rice and Hoffman, 2014). Elsewhere Rice (2016), I have suggested that systematic interventions upon children’s defense mechanisms may promote the development of the implicit emotion regulation system. Because this program of interpretation of children’s defenses against painful feelings is an acknowledged (and unacknowledged) central intervention in child psychoanalysis (Hoffman, 2007), it becomes possible to propose that psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children advances executive function development through its promotion of implicit emotion regulation capacities through the technique of defense analysis.