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In This Paper I shall attempt to make an appraisal of the work which Michael Fordham carried out in putting into practice his ideas for the Child Analytic Training. The dates I have chosen cover the years from 1960, when the Children's Section came into being, until his retirement as Director of the Child Analytic Training in September, 1985.
It is one thing to have an idea or a vision and quite another to be able to implement that vision or idea in the outside world.
The story of the conception, birth and growth of the Child Analytic Training (C.A.T.) illustrates just how difficult and how exciting the transition from inspiration to realisation can be. My qualification for attempting to write this story is that I happen to be the only person, other than Fordham himself, who has been directly involved with the training over the whole twenty-five years.
Although 1960 is the date that one might call ‘the onset of labour’, the conception of the idea in Fordham's mind is probably dateless. He started working with children in the early 1930s both in child guidance clinics and privately. In 1944 his first book, The Life of Childhood, was published. It is interesting to see that all that time ago he wrote in the preface,
The major task before child analysts—I use this term in its wide sense to cover all those who are investigating the unconscious process in children—is to add stones to the foundations of a house which is in the process of construction. These foundations will be laid by expressing and defining standpoints about the mass of material with which children present us. Without a standpoint the mass is simply chaotic; with a standpoint it takes on a coherent form (Fordham 1, p. iv).
Later in the introduction he says ‘Behind any research there is always a subjective factor as driving force, a scientific theory or the inspiration