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Clinical commentary by Jilian Wilson, child and adolescent psychotherapist and organising tutor of the Child Psychotherapy Training at the BAP
It is strange to comment on an unknown person's work. Having looked at this a number of times, I find I enjoy and respect the therapist. To me this therapy is a going concern and both participants come alive in a convincing way.
So what am I doing adding my thoughts to it? Is it right to interfere? There is something quite precious about an ongoing piece of work, which is going well enough and indeed even more than well enough, and where my sense is of a therapist with a well working internal and perhaps external supervisor. Of course, the reality is that now the work has long continued and is somewhere else and we, the readers are in the privileged position of having been given an opportunity to glimpse into a therapy. We can use it as something to play with, a touchstone in our own minds. I find myself putting it alongside my own world of therapy experiences, current and past thoughts, ideas, memories, all interestingly jogged into life.
I had two very different reactions as I first read it – irritation/annoyance early on, relief and appreciation later on, probably very much as felt by the participants as this session proceeded. The start was hard and I think it is most useful to articulate it as it felt, presuming the therapist will survive that, just as (I presumed) s/he more than survives some tough stuff in this session. I was at first identified with the child – the therapist's contributions seemed clumsy, poking in, being ‘a clever dick’ to quote an adolescent I recently encountered. It is difficult to be in touch with the destruction and danger he says was around – we do not have details – what is so special about his chair, which we hear about? He is worrying if David saw the former patient – is he preoccupied with his own position? – the chair, the failed unencumbered start – bulwarks that hold therapy thinking but