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Pieces of Molly: An ordinary life
No full textPieces of Molly is a memoir with a difference. Told in the first and third person, it offers a perspective on the self not often found in autobiographies. Molly can be seen as everychild - the author and the reader too - showing the everyday pains and difficulties encountered in all our lives. Molly s journey starts as everyone s does, in the womb. In most memoirs the first ten years are swiftly passed over, but here Judith shows us development from conception onwards as Molly begins to grow up in a tiny village on the east coast of England, which we see through her eyes; the eyes of a child born at the end of the Second World War. Pieces of Molly is a map of one small girl s mind, as the barely subdued ordinary terrors of childhood lurk around her world, a girl surrounded by the vibrant life of a working farm at a time when rapid developments are forcing that world to change. Molly is a curious little detective, keen to find out more about life and love. For her, the shadows behind the doors only make sense in hindsight, and buried family secrets come to light as she struggles with the problem of how and who to be in the world
Learning from the inkblot
No full textThe contributions of Wilfred Bion to psychoanalysis and Hermann Rorschach to personality assessment have had considerable influence on psychotherapy. Both authors developed their own systems in attempts to establish a more scientific approach to the study of the mind. This article introduces some key concepts from the work of Bion and shows their applications to the Rorschach Test
Contemporary developments in adult and young adult therapy. The work of the Tavistock and Portman Clinics. Volume 1
No full text'Nature dictates that as individuals we are conceived, are born, and then at some point later die. The shape of the arc that we follow, involving growth and development with eventual decline, is something that we might all like to influence. It has been argued that the same basic curve, however, is followed by societies, civilisations and indeed organisations. How does an organisation influence its trajectory? How do organisations avoid the pull towards conservatism and protectionism associated with the developmental plateau found at the top of the curve? I think that in this book Professor Alessandra Lemma has given us something of an insight into this process within one organisation, the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. In bringing together this collection of paper, Professor Lemma has undertaken the role of skilled gardener herself. The work of the Trust is now broad. Training and education makes up almost half of the activity, while Child and Adolescent mental Health Services over half of the clinical work. Professor Lemma has, in this first volume, broadly focused her attention on our work with Adolescents and Adults. She has clearly selected her authors for their quality and supported them with similar care. All of this is evident in the chapters that comprise this book, and in the description of an organisation struggling to evolve in a manner that links it inextricably to the communities and society within which it is situated as much as to its own history'.
- From the foreword by Dr Matthew Patrick, Chief Executive, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trus
Dreams and play in child analysis today
No full textTo approach the topic of children's dreaming in a psychoanalytic context the links between dream and play have to be our starting point. While in adult analysis there can be continuing robust debate about the centrality of dreams for understanding unconscious life, we are working in a different register with children. When looking at the place of dreams in contemporary analytic work with children, there seems to me to be a number of matters to consider in exploring possible factors at work. Probably the most significant of all is the changing composition of the patients seen for child analysis. The patients now seen for child analysis in the UK in NHS clinics include children on the autistic spectrum and with developmental delay, but the larger number have histories of severe maltreatment in their early years, including both deprivation and neglect, and physical emotional, and sexual abuse. Children with such damaging early experiences tend to have difficulties in symbolic activity. A second factor may be the changing nature of parent-child relationships over the last two generations. A third phenomenon which may be at work is the impact of the intensely visual quality of contemporary culture. I will look in detail at some clinical material and I will touch on what emerged from my explorations of recent psychoanalytic writing about dreams