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Psychoanalytic psychotherapy within the public sector is increasingly challenged by the ‘evidence based mentality’, and by current exciting
opportunities to influence practice in various mental health settings. Windows of opportunity have arisen in relation to Department of Health Guidance on ‘Personality Disorder; No Longer a Diagnosis of Exclusion’ (National Institute for Mental Health in England Personality Disorder: no longer a diagnosis of exclusion. Policy implementation guidance for the development of services for people with personality disorder (London: Department of Health)) ‘Women's Mental Health; into the Mainstream’ (Department of Health Women's Mental Health: Into the Mainstream: Strategic Development of Mental Health Care for Women (London: Department of Health)) and ‘Organising and Delivering Psychological Therapies’ (Department of Health Organising and Delivering Psychological Therapies (London: Department of Health)).
These documents are both supportive of the psychological therapy approach, and challenging of psychological therapies in delivering this approach. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy must not be left behind.
This book, edited by three psychodynamically minded editors, Penny Campling, Stefan Davies and Graeme Farquharson sets out to help create therapeutic environments for people in mental health settings. It aims to provide an introductory text, accessible to all staff to encourage them, to excite them and to prevent them ‘reinventing the wheel’ within their services. The authors aim to position residential environments as one of a range of options to meet the needs of mental health patients and not necessarily as a last resort. The authors are to be congratulated. They meet these challenges head on and succeed admirably in producing a lively, informative and challenging multi-authored book.
How can the Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy learn from this book? How can individual psychoanalytic psychotherapists position themselves in