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The third edition of Peter Blake's book builds on what he has previously written (Blake, 2001) about the perennial question of interpretation in psychotherapy: the clinical challenges of when, how and in what form to interpret. I suspect that the first and second editions of this book by the psychologist and Tavistock trained child and adolescent psychotherapist were very different. In the introduction and conclusion to the third edition, Blake, who is based in Australia, details how he has changed his clinical thinking and practice over the decades since he first trained. At times reading this book, I felt as if I was closely following the evolution of a senior therapist wanting to properly learn from clinical experience. Broadly, Blake addresses three aspects of child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Namely, the place of interpretation, the centrality of play and the use of transference/countertransference. He uses recent developments in psychoanalysis and contiguous fields to argue clearly for a more relational approach to clinical work with children and adolescents.
This book is being used in training the next generation of child psychotherapists in Australia and one can see why. It has crystal clear descriptions of complex psychoanalytic thinking, key summary points and suggested further reading at the end of each of the chapters. It would be wrong, however, to consider it a simple book or a primer. Blake distils the research and clinical thinking of many eminent writers in order to challenge the status quo. For example, the title borrows Ogden's quote about operating not at the epistemological but the ontological level: ‘making the conscious unconscious’.
for Bion, the unconscious is the seat of the psychoanalytic function of the personality, and, consequently, in order to do psychoanalytic work, one must make the conscious unconscious - that is, make the conscious lived experience available to the unconscious work of dreaming. (p. 2)
In chapter on