Editorial

Following the publication of the latest results of the Tavistock research on evaluation in the last issue of this Journal, it is a pleasure to publish for the wider readership a version of the paper given at the ACP conference in March of this year by the Great Ormond Street team. This paper outlines the research programme on sexually offending behaviour in young adolescent boys, focusing on the extended assessments (over twelve sessions) undertaken by the child psychotherapist team members. The vivid clinical material in Part II not only provides a thoughtful comment on the role, technique and focus of such brief work but also offers much preliminary thinking on the link between sexuality and violence.

Don Campbell draws on his experience at the Portman Clinic, London, in his article on assessment of adolescent sexual abusers. The importance and protection of the ‘ego ideal’ is stressed and many readers will be interested in his concept of ‘the shame shield’. It seems sometimes as if the concept of ‘shame’ has lost favour in the psychoanalytic world: perhaps a new debate can be opened.

With two opening papers on parallel themes, we have chosen to follow with a Jungian paper in which Jane Bunster delightfully traces her work with 6-year-old Louis as he negotiates the process of ‘de-integration’ — discovering his potential as a child able to encounter and meet the world, with a range of positive and negative feelings. The ‘good-enough’ experience is described, interwoven with material from infant observation to illuminate the thesis.

Abuse by the system is the theme of Debbie Hindle's paper ‘Learning to think in a war zone’. Caught in long-term care, Jamie and his therapist have to work in an arena of total uncertainty where no one — child, foster parents, professionals or birth mother — can be certain of where the