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The material for this set of commentaries is the assessment sessions of a little girl being brought to the therapist by her parents. In great contrast to some of the recent presentations of work with adults there is no history or background presented. It is possible to see the interest of work with children in providing a chance to examine pure process, to look immediately at the transference and the unfolding of this new relationship.
For all the authors there are different questions raised by and framed within their different theoretical frames, but there are also convergences which make the work described recognizably therapeutic - as we see the child being helped to start to think in new ways, and psychoanalytic - with every commentator and the original therapist assuming they need to pay attention to the relationship formed between the patient and the therapist. The variations come in areas such as the use made of the transference. How explicitly and how quickly the different therapists wish to comment upon it, for instance. The question of how far differences between different schools represent some real cleavage in ways of thinking, or how far these are individual emphases, is one to ponder.
Katherine Arnold