Containment and Reciprocity: Integrating Psychoanalytic Theory and Child Development Research for Work with Children (2007), by Hazel Douglas, published by  Routledge.

Hazel Douglas sets out to distinguish containment from reciprocity and posed questions about the two concepts. Are they linked? How or when does the therapist recognize each concept during his or her work? Does the analytical literature have the language to describe or identify the concept of reciprocity in the context of child and infant mental health?

My first impression of the book was that it was very much research-led, as stated. The thread throughout the book incorporated child developmental researchers alongside prominent psychoanalysts, including Bion and child developmentalists such as Stern, and her own clinical work as a child psychotherapist. She defines the two concepts: containment and reciprocity. Containment is the emotional communication between two people that involves reception and understanding from the other without becoming overwhelmed by the content. Reciprocity, Douglas describes, is the interaction between the baby and the adult when both are involved in its initiation, the regulation, and the termination of the interaction. She goes on to interweave case studies into her research.

Finally, she advocates the use of the concept of reciprocity not only in her field, but proposes its application to allied professionals in their work. Here I feel she is linking this to the Solihull Project, which she also draws research from in terms of the parent-child dyad.

I do not feel that, as therapists, we are as unaware as Douglas will have us believe; that we do not know when reciprocity comes into the work. What about the clients that we make connections with? Even though Douglas mentions attachment theory and touches on Bowlby, and given her expertise in her field of child psychotherapy, I was disappointed that she did not draw more on the attachment/relational model, which is really formed around the concept of