Child Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (Professional Doctorate) (Tavistock)

This thesis seeks to chart the creation, development and eventual demise of the child analytic training of The Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP), the foremost Jungian Society in the UK. The brainchild of the Society's founding director, Michael Fordham, the creation of the child training drew on the talents and persistence of many committed individuals. Through oral history interviews and archival research I weave together a narrative that will serve as testament to this achievement and offer first hand recollections for posterity. Through these sources the narrative also explores the difficulties that the training faced and which ultimately led to its eventual demise. Additionally I interrogate the current status of this tradition of child analysis and ask the question whether or not the tradition continues to exist and if so in what ways; I
conclude that currently the tradition can only be said to exist in an attenuated form and that the future is bleak. In the course of the thesis I locate the SAP training within the development more generally of child analytic provision within the UK, the relationship of that to the child guidance movement and to the psychoanalytic diaspora, which made it
possible. I describe the current obstacles faced by the child p
sychotherapy discipline
as well as psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the NHS.