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This volume, compiled of a broad range of case studies, is a valuable reminder of the impact that psychoanalytic work can have on groups of children where there are deficits and disturbances in symbolic function, imagination and the desire for shared meaning. It joins the well-versed debate about what can or cannot be done by psychoanalytic work; a necessary debate and exploration for the unsettled clinician in
the face of a child or adolescent patient who is apparently reluctant to make use of her therapist. I think we are working in interesting times as our understanding of neurodevelopment continues to demonstrate the centrality of relationships, and this volume is a helpful recapitulation and elaboration of the ways in which child psychotherapy has grown technically to encourage and facilitate the growth of the mind and, more importantly, its capacities.
To begin with the introduction: this is a scene setting exercise as might be expected, but there is an underlying argumentative tone here that, in my view, is not entirely necessary. It is an all too familiar starting point and one which seems to haunt the relationship between psychoanalysis and autism. Statements such as, ‘People who attack this method often do not know it at all or know it only by hearsay …’ (p. 3) come across as somewhat defensive and made me wonder whether there might ever come a point at which we will be confident to describe the work we do without immediately feeling we must refer to the detrimental impact of the earlier mistakes such as Bettelheim’s popularisation of Kanner’s concept of the ‘refrigerator mother’ (Kanner, 1943). Or indeed might we see a time where we can drop the assumption that other professionals or parents are not interested in, or do not understand, the value of the psychoanalytic contribution? Drawing on my own professional experience of working as a psychoanalytic clinician in an NHS service for children with developmental disorders for several years, my current vi