‘The End of Abuse’: A Play Reading in Three Parts by John Woods. International Attachment Network Training Pack. Published by  Open Gate Press, London, 2001; text of play £6.00, text of play plus clinical commentaries £11.99, video of play plus clinical commentaries £19.99, video, text and clinical commentaries £24.99.

This learning pack consists of a video recording of John Woods's three part dramatization of a generational case history, ‘The End of Abuse’: A Play Reading in Three Parts, accompanied by a copy of the text, including a foreword by Estela Welldon, and an epilogue by John Woods. A third important component of the pack is a set of clinical commentaries, from a variety of clinicians, all of whom are informed by and work within the International Attachment Network. Each part of the pack represents a substantial piece of work and therefore deserves its own comment, so I will begin with some comments on the elements which make up this piece of work. Then I will move on to some thoughts about its impact as a training tool for psychotherapists. Finally, I will consider The End of Abuse in the wider context of mental health training needs.

The play is based on John Woods's own case experience, but not on any specific case: it is a representation of ‘caseness’ (by which I mean the set of professional practices, categorizations and decisions by which a life story is transformed into a case history). It is structured in ‘parts’, rather than ‘acts’,