Therapeutic Consultations in Child Psychiatry

Author:

    1. Winnicott

Hogarth Press, ?4.50

This posthumously published book presents one of the most important contributions that Donald Winnicott made to clinical practice. He described it as the application of psychoanalysis to child psychiatry. Details are given of the treatment of twenty-one children, and the descriptions have the spontaneity and right choice of words which characterised Dr Winnicott’s encounters with his patients.

The work had a very practical objective. It became obvious that it ?was ‘not useful or practicable to prescribe a psychoanalytic treatment for every child’, and Dr Winnicott found himself using a first interview for therapeutic purposes to such good effect that, in many cases, this was all that was needed. At times he appears to be addressing himself to fellow analysts. He refers to the pressures on analysts to develop methods which will spread the benefit of the analytical process to far more patients than could be dealt with by the formal analytical method. By the same token it is necessary to spread the message and the understanding to the even larger number of child psychiatrists and therapists who are not psychoanalysts.

Donald Winnicott had the power to communicate ideas, without diluting them, to workers with different backgrounds, training, experience and so on. Each of his pupils, readers, or members of his audiences, would get a separate message; but all of them got something of him.

This particular book is for people working in the clinical field and a copy should be available in every clinic.

    1. Kahn

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