How do Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists experience and understand the ways in which their personal meditation practice informs their clinical practice?

Recent years have seen growing interest in mindfulness within mental health disciplines, yet comparatively little research has explored how psychoanalytic psychotherapists experience personal meditation in relation to clinical work, particularly within child and adolescent psychotherapy. This qualitative study asked how Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists experience and understand the ways in which personal meditation informs their clinical practice. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with four experienced Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists (CAPPTs) with established meditation practices. The study sought an idiographic understanding of participants’ experiences rather than evidence of clinical efficacy or patient outcome. Analysis generated four interrelated superordinate themes: Integrating Meditation into Psychoanalytic Practice; Mindful Psychoanalytic Practice; Meditative Engagement in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy; and Sustained Presence Beyond the Therapy Room. Participants described meditation as a philosophical and experiential point of reference, as contributing to openness, curiosity, non-reactivity and emotional availability, as an internal resource during some clinical encounters, and as supporting reflection and recovery beyond the therapy room. Divergent accounts qualified these findings. Meditation and psychoanalysis were not experienced as equivalent, meditation did not prevent emotional disturbance or reactivity, and participants differed in how closely they brought contemplative practice into clinical and professional life. The findings suggest that the significance of personal meditation lay principally within the therapist’s subjective and reflective life rather than in its use as a clinical intervention. They also highlight tensions between regulation and receptivity, alongside questions concerning religion, spirituality, cultural identity, privacy and professional belonging. The study does not establish effects on patients or treatment outcomes. Its implications therefore concern reflective consideration within clinical practice, supervision and training, while identifying patient-centred, prospective and comparative research as necessary before claims about clinical effectiveness can be made.