Child psychotherapists have long appreciated that psychoanalytic work with children cannot simply be about analysing conflicts, removing repressions or reconstructing the past. More often it involves enabling processes and structures to develop to allow for the possibility of thought, reflection and sustained emotional experience in the first place. Although this is partly a consequence of the kinds of children seen in psychotherapy nowadays, it also reflects the influence of infant observation and recent developmental psychology.

This book aims to provide substantive illustrations of what a developmental approach to psychoanalytic work can look like, presenting cases treated by workers who originally trained at the Anna Freud Clinic.

The book is in three parts. In Part I, on theoretical background, Anne Hurry puts forward a beautifully lucid argument for developmental