Joining In: An Account of a Latency Group

This is an account of a psychoanalytic group run for a small group of latency children. I was introduced to this approach to psychoanalytic group psychotherapy for children during the course of my training in child psychotherapy at the Tavistock Clinic. This work began at the Tavistock in the early 1970s and has been developed by Sue Reid, more recently with Hamish Canham, both consultant child psychotherapists. My introduction to the work was practical, something in the nature of an apprenticeship, through my participation in the groups workshop led by Sue Reid and Hamish Canham. The workshop studies groups in a variety of settings, including nurseries, schools, and clinics (Reid 1999, Reid and Kolvin 1993), and the nature of the work varies according to the character of the setting. The account I give here is of a group with latency children, which was run in a clinical setting, for a year and a half. The group met on a weekly basis, with a parallel parents' group run by two of our colleagues, also meeting weekly. I aim here to give an account of the children's group as it developed and, in doing so, to consider the nature of the processes that took place within it. Although the interrelationship between what took place in the children's and parents' groups was certainly very important, I shall not attempt to follow this in detail, although I mention it toward the end. The duration of the groups was not predetermined, and the decision to bring the two groups to a planned ending after five terms of work took into account the situation within both groups.