Editorial

This edition of the Journal of Child Psychotherapy takes as its starting point a topic of discussion that became a half-day conference in 2005. Margot Waddell chaired that conference and gave an introductory paper, while Anne Alvarez and Edna O'Shaughnessy approached the topic from slightly different theoretical positions. All three authors have revised their contributions from that day for publication in the Journal. New clinical illustrations are given and the contributors have also refined some of their theoretical points, with Anne Alvarez substantially expanding her original ideas. Elizabeth Urban has written a paper linking these ideas with those of Fordham, enabling us to have a Jungian perspective. Finally, we invited Cathy Urwin to contribute a paper that linked these concepts and ways of understanding them with a historical and child development research perspective. We have also reprinted part of an article written for The Bulletin by Maria Rhode and Cathy Urwin to give readers access to some of the ideas discussed at the conference. It is fitting that this edition, which shows how vital the strong theoretical framework that underpins our clinical work is, includes the paper that won the 2005 JCP Research Essay Prize.

We open our edition with Nick Midgley's prize-winning paper on the ways that the single case study has been used as a form of research, the lack of acceptance of this approach in certain circles and how its use could be defended and improved. Midgley approaches his subject with a splendid mixture of scholarship and wit (for example highlighting the disappointment a would-be researcher probably felt at Freud's curt response to his ideas). He poses the question ‘are there ways in which child psychotherapy can maintain its focus on the consulting room as the primary research laboratory, remaining true to the complexity of the human mind and the therapeutic process, while also addressing some of the criticisms made by outside observers about how