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This collection of classic papers by Juliet Hopkins under the title An Independent Mind brings together a breadth and depth of thinking from across a fascinating professional career. As its editors, Ann Horne and Monica Lanyado, reflect in their Introduction, Juliet Hopkins's work has found an international audience among a wide range of professionals in child psychotherapy and psychology, child care, education and social care. They attribute this to three factors: her commitment to child development and improving practice; her ability to integrate a range of approaches; and her capacity to communicate in a clear and accessible way (p. xiv). The book benefits from a Foreword by Dilys Daws, who touchingly reflects on Hopkins's generosity to students and colleagues, and from a series of introductions by the editors to the collection as a whole and its grouped papers. Each group represents a key area of clinical practice; in each, Hopkins demonstrates her commitment to integrating different theoretical models and their associated practices. In offering such an integration, however, she never elides the differences between the theories and concepts under discussion, but rather brings out their particularities and the different ways in which they may illuminate the clinical picture. The reader never doubts that focus on the individual child or family lies at the heart of this careful thinking.
The first section, entitled ‘Trauma and child psychotherapy’, presents three papers about the role of trauma in the psychopathology of two young children, as well as the careful work that can be done to take ‘steps towards … recovery’ (p. 5). It is salutary, reading these papers today, to be reminded of the extent to which trauma was disregarded in earlier years. Lanyado writes:
When her paper was accepted for publication in 1984 the etiological importance of trauma was still so strongly denied that she had to appease the editor by amending her title from ‘The role of trauma’ to ‘The