Work Discussion

Work Discussionbrings together a combination of close observation of, and personal and interpersonal responses to, the minutiae of the work setting and its dynamics, both internal and external. Such a model depends on the development of hard-won capacities, and the descriptions offered here, both by students and by experienced staff, fully demonstrate the immense relevance of the approach, both to training and to a wide variety of work situations. The book outlines the process of the method itself, followed by descriptions of a range of settings, both in Britain and abroad, in which that method has been successfully applied. The contributors draw on experiences across age, culture, and race in, for example, schools, hospitals, residential homes, in a prison, and in a refugee community. The final chapter explores the implications of work discussion for research and policy-making more generally. Many of the situations narrated here are extreme, whether in terms of disturbance or of vulnerability, but they offer moving insights into how effective the method can be and how truly impressive a developmental model it provides.

Margaret Rustin is a consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic, London, where she has been Head of Child Psychotherapy since 1986. She has pioneered and supported the extension of training in psychoanalytic observational approaches to training across the United Kingdom and in a number of other countries. She has coauthored, with Michael Rustin, "Narratives of Love and Loss" and "Mirror to Nature", and has co-edited "Closely Observed Infants", as well as "Psychotic States in Children" and "Assessment in Psychotherapy".