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Most of the contributors to this book are staff members of the Tavistock Clinic who are also teachers on the child psychotherapy training.
It may be worth noting the title, which uses the word ‘in’ rather than ‘for’. The implication is that assessment is here to be understood as a piece of work that can be an end in itself, ‘a brief intervention with therapeutic potential’. Much of the work described comes under the heading of ‘therapeutic consultation’, and the book is possibly partly aimed as a contribution to the place of brief work as one of the core skills of child psychotherapists - a major issue for child psychotherapy within the NHS.
While readers will find much in the book that informs them on questions and decisions to be made regarding longer-term individual therapy, the prevailing message is that assessment is neither an exact art nor a prescriptive process leading to exact conclusions. The general message regarding treatment following assessment is that psychotherapy is suitable for any responsive child where the family and network (including co-working therapists) support it. Frequency of sessions, with some important exceptions, is mainly left to a consideration of what can be managed, taking everything from consent and motivation to logistics into account.
Though readers will find a chapter on the under-5s (in a special context) and a section on adolescence, the format eschews a steady churning through the ages and stages of development, and of matters relevant to them. The word ‘latency’ will not be found anywhere, even once, and the word ‘puberty’ occurs, in passing, just twice.
The book is divided into four sections, the first two of which are about work with children with very severe psychopathology, while the last two are about family work and adolescence, respectively. There is considerable overlap between sections and between chapters. This, as mentioned in the introduction, is to do with the complexity of the subject and, I would add, the non-lin