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As the duality of the title implies, this book concerns both the highly specialised endeavour of exploring ways to work with a dying child, and also the work, which engages all therapists, of “giving sorrow words”. This is related to the sorrows of loss which accompany all the gains of development and which can prepare the individual for the eventual losses of bereavement and of life itself.
Dorothy Judd is one of the small but increasing number of child psychotherapists who, in recent years, have been applying the insights of psychoanalysis to work with children and adolescents who are physically disabled, chronically ill or, as in this case, terminally ill. Following previous experience of this nature, the writer spent three months regularly visiting Robert, a seven and a half year old, who was in hospital dying of leukaemia. The diary of her times with Robert, her contacts with his parents and the immediate reflections and observations of countertransference which accompany her notes form the central part of the book.
These case notes are preceded and followed by substantial sections which reveal a remarkable depth and breadth of integrative work. Thus we find ourselves not just reading a further example of the extended application of psychoanalytical insights in an exceptionally demanding situation, but rather we feel that we are accompanying the writer in a wide-ranging and deeply reflective process which enhances and enriches these insights. A range of psychoanalytical, psycho-social and medical writings are drawn upon and these gain further significance by illuminations from poetry and art. These studies lead to an increased awareness of the part played by death in the fullness of living, while always retaining the vulnerability of recognising that “what you do not know is the only thing you know” (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets).
The book also reveals much drawn from the experience of others. Of particular interest are the substantial extracts from interviews with t