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This book is made up of a series of eight lectures given in Sheffield by child psychotherapists, as part of the Tavistock model observational studies course. This particular course was attended by a wide range of professionals who were also able to attend individual lectures, and it was therefore adapted to meet their mixed needs.
This book has an excellent introductory chapter, written by the editors. It helpfully describes the salient issues to be elaborated in the lectures: Oedipal development and the capacity for thinking, which constitute the two central themes of the book, and which serve to link the chapters and give the whole an inner coherence. Each chapter was written by a different presenter and has a distinctive stylistic tone. Their approaches to their material are diverse, with varying degrees of emphasis on theory, observational material and clinical material. But the common themes, as described by the editors, and perhaps also the fact the writers were all Tavistock trained, ensure the book has a feeling of continuity. It is also evidence of the shared recognition of the centrality of these issues to a psychoanalytic understanding of personality development.
The editors explain some fundamental psychoanalytic concepts, perhaps as a way of introducing these to readers who are unfamiliar with them. The editors write, ‘The aim of the course…was to focus on ordinary development … development as a process…. The metaphor of a spiral best illustrates the juxtaposition of linear time with the circularity of the internal experience that we are attempting to capture and describe.’ While the external world of the developing personality is evident throughout the book to a lesser or greater degree, it is the focus on the developing internal world which repeatedly takes the reader back to considering Oedipal issues and the ability to think. Linking these with infantile parts of the developing personality and with the notion of the spiral helps to give the reader a s