Defense-Oriented Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy as a Tailored Treatment for Boys: Neurobiological Underpinnings to Male-Specific Response Tested in Regulation-Focused Psychotherapy for Children

Abstract

This paper presents defense-oriented psychoanalytic psychotherapy as a tailored treatment for boys through a neurophysiological hypothesis. Male central nervous system development is reviewed, with a focus on the development of the emotion regulation system. The organizational effects of pre- and post-natal androgens delay central nervous system development in males relative to females, following a caudal to rostral phylogenetic framework. Ventromedial prefrontal structures mature at an earlier developmental age than dorsolateral prefrontal structures, creating less of a gender gap in the available underlying neural architecture for responsivity to targeted therapeutic intervention. The hypothesized operation of defense analysis upon ventromedial prefrontal cortical structures and corticolimbic connectivity therefore positions boys to benefit from psychotherapy equally as girls. In this study, we explored gender differences in presentation and response to a short-term, manualized defense-oriented psychoanalytic psychotherapy named regulation-focused psychotherapy for children. In a sample size of 43 school-aged children, consisting of 32 boys and 11 girls, with oppositional defiant disorder, we found no statistically significant differences in participant characteristics upon entry nor in treatment response, as measured by changes in scores on the Oppositional Defiant Disorder Rating Scale, the oppositional defiant problems subscale of the Child Behavior Checklist, the suppression and reappraisal subscales of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents, and the lability and negativity subscale of the Emotion Regulation Checklist. The findings were comparable with the gendered findings of preexisting studies of play therapy, where boys and girls improve equally, but not of behaviorally predominant psychotherapy, where girls appear to have superior responses. Our findings suggest that the treatment as a general play therapy, but with a focus on the implicit emotion regulation system, was successful in meeting boys’ gendered treatment needs. Conclusions are drawn with implications for further study.