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Over a career spanning nearly 50 years, Edna O'Shaughnessy has been actively involved in the fields of child and adult analysis, working in a busy private practice and involved with the Association of Child Psychotherapists, the British Institute of Psychoanalysis and the London Kleinians. She has supervised, analysed and taught numerous psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, employing her dedication, keen insight, and lively imagination not only in the consulting room, but on many committees, conference podiums, editorial meetings and a variety of teaching venues. Drawn by her arresting ideas and fluent writing capacities, I approached her first to request case consultations and then with the hope of persuading her to publish more of her material. We reached a compromise by agreeing on a taped conversation for this Journal. A list of her articles appears at the end of this conversation.
Jean Arundale
JA: What were the influences that led you to become a psychoanalyst?
EO'S: I became a psychoanalyst after being a child psychotherapist. Before that I studied philosophy, first in South Africa at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg from where I won an overseas scholarship, which I took up in Oxford to do a B.Phil. in Philosophy. After Oxford
EDNA O'SHAUGHNESSY is a Training Analyst for the British Psychoanalytical Society and works for the Tavistock Child and Family Department and their psychoanalytic psychotherapy training. Address for correspondence: 22 Heath Hurst Road, London NW3 2RX.
JEAN ARUNDALE Phd is a training and supervising psychoanalytical psychotherapist with the British Association of Psychotherapists. She was Editor of this Journal from 1994 to 2002. Address for correspondence: 11 Albert Place, London W8 5PD. [email: ]
I held the two-year Susan Stebbing Fellowship at Bedford College in Regent's Park, then still part of London University. This entailed a little philosophical teaching, but was meant mostly as