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I confess to having been unfamiliar with the concept of ‘communicative psychoanalysis’ before reading this book, and I imagine this may be the case with other child psychotherapists in Britain and elsewhere, as it is a theoretical framework not frequently cited in papers published in this Journal or others especially known to our profession. The author is Canadian and received training from Robert Langs, who together with another American, Harold Searles, has been responsible for developments in this field since the 1960s. There are now International and European Societies for Communicative Psychoanalysis, and a journal published from New York.
I think this is a book which could arouse a range of thoughts and emotions in child psychotherapists. It seems almost infuriatingly didactic and prescriptive at times; it sometimes adopts a not altogether attractive polemical tone - for example, when fulminating against the perceived hostility of the American psychoanalytical establishment towards the ideas of communicative psychoanalysts (though it then, it is hinted, adopted some of them without due acknowledgement). At times it seems to veer away from the main theme to explore philosophical issues such as freedom to play. Nevertheless, there are some thought-provoking ideas, raising questions of theory and technique, on which I have found it useful to reflect. Indeed, what can be described as the central theme of the book is rather challenging and provocative: do we really communicate with our patients or do we ‘speculatively intervene’?
The book is divided into three sections: theory and technique, clinical material, and a third part entitled ‘Are we created equal?’ In the first section, Bonac develops the work done by Langs with adults on free association and the meaning ascribed by patients to the implications of the therapist's communications and actions. Bonac wishes to put this at the forefront of her thinking about work with children:
The course of therapy could be des