Editorial

This is another general edition of the Journal, which reflects in particular the international character of debate and exchange within our profession, with articles by authors from the UK, the USA and the Middle East, as well as a Clinical Commentary contribution from Australia. All the articles in this edition in one way or another have as a central theme issues of technique or the application of child psychotherapy in different settings.

We were delighted to award the clinical essay prize to Kate Robertson for her paper ‘Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, Where have you been?’ An account of intensive psychotherapy with a seven‐year-old boy in a special school’. The paper was originally presented at the 2007 ACP Annual Conference. Robertson's paper vividly shows the experience of setting up and carrying out intensive psychotherapy in a special school setting, which in this case was very well supported by the school. From the outset, therapy was offered for one year and the paper traces the several mini-endings during the breaks between sessions as well as addressing the child's reluctant accommodation to the final ending. Although working with a markedly disabled and delayed child was not the main topic of the paper, the establishment between child and therapist of a proto- and then developed conversation/relationship (from banging to words with a differentiated other) offers a deeply intriguing account.

In this edition of the Journal, there are two articles on working with families or pairs of members within a family. In ‘Tripartite therapy with older children: mutuality in the relationship of a parent–child attachment’, the author, Nancy Berlin, provides a helpful map of some of the key ideas in attachment theory since Bowlby. The attachment perspective, as pioneered by Bowlby and significantly expanded upon by Ainsworth and Main, has for a long time been of interest to child psychotherapists who, from their own framework(s), know the need for a secure base provided by the pri