Child and Adolescent Analysis - Clinical Work Discussion Seminar | 20th September

‘Playing the Mind’ focusses on the importance of play in analysis for the representation of the child’s internal world. It offers material from three very different child patients to illustrate how they could eventually use play to represent their internal states of mind and make developmental progress. The first example is from the analysis of a 7-year-old girl who could play very imaginatively when she felt safe enough with me, the second case is of a 7-year-old boy whose rigid defences initially inhibited his capacity to play, and the final case is of a 6-year-old boy who was so terrified and damaged that there was no ‘as if’, and he was unable to play for many months in analysis. I look at the importance of the analyst enabling and engaging with the play in as fine-tuned a way as possible to suit the needs of each individual child, and how the analytic technique of developmental therapy can facilitate this.

Marianne Parsons is a child and adult psychoanalyst and a child and adolescent psychotherapist. Originally a teacher, she trained in child analysis at the Hampstead Clinic (later renamed the Anna Freud Centre) then joined the staff as Head of Clinical Training. She edited the Journal of Child Psychotherapy, trained as an adult psychoanalyst at the British Society of Psychoanalysis and worked for 19 years as a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at the Portman Clinic where she developed a special interest in aggression and violence. She was a member of the Violence Research Group led by Mervin Glasser and ran the Portman Clinic Diploma in Forensic Psychotherapeutic Studies. She is now retired from clinical practice but continues to supervise and teach in the UK and abroad. She has contributed several papers to psychoanalytic books and journals. 

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