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The majority of contributions making up Thinking Space originate from presentations made at an eponymously titled monthly multi-disciplinary learning forum at the Tavistock Clinic. This forum was initiated in 2002 by the book's editor, Frank Lowe, to promote and sustain critical thinking on matters of prejudice and ‘difference’ as they pertain to psychotherapeutic activity. The contributions encompass examinations of clinical work and personal reflective accounts as well as institutional and political histories. And a wide variety of topics are addressed: amongst them, ethnicity, race, class, sexual identity and the 2011 riots. In total, the book provides an engaging sample of the diverse and valuable work coming out of the forum; albeit no coherence will be lost if the book is consulted solely for a chapter or two according to a particular line of enquiry.
To focus on a handful of them: Juliet Newbigin provides a delicate historical overview of the complexities between homosexuality and the psychoanalytic tradition, interlinking this concern with a contemplation of what has been at stake socio-politically with the evolving theorisation of gender difference in the analytic field.
Jonathan Bradley's look at the ‘racial other’ in clinical situations vividly illustrates the sensitivities required of the therapist in the fraught terrain of work with service users for whom formal mental health settings are experienced as a strange, intimidating space. Bradley's reflections derive from his specialist work as a child psychotherapist but make for relatable reading across the different professional groups involved in child and adolescent mental health by homing in on the intermeshing of practical and emotional issues that troubled parents present with and the challenges this presents to professionals striving to disentangle them.
Joanna Ryan's chapter draws upon material taken from in-depth interviews carried out with 13 experienced psychoanalytic psychotherapists. These sought