Letter to the Editors from Mr David Morgan, Tavistock and Portman Clinic NHS Trust, UK

Thank you for allowing me to reply to Angela Joyce's letter. I think she is right to take me to task for what appears to be my criticism of other schools of thought. I have to say that this was not my intention. What I was attempting to convey is how, in an otherwise extremely stimulating and thought provoking book, it was difficult at times for me to feel the clinical examples did justice to the theoretical content. I speculated that in my view this was due to the emphasis on detailed accounts of the patients history and communications to her in the sessions without much illustration of how the analyst actually interacted with this material. I hoped to convey that this could be a lack of understanding on my part, agreeing with Dr McDougall when in her last chapter she writes about the difficulties in talking to each other across the theoretical divides. It was certainly not my intention to be critical of other ways of working, but to reflect on how hard it is sometimes to resonate with very different approaches to interesting clinical phenomena.

Yours sincerely,