Observation and the Psychoanalytic Imagination: Papers from Child Psychotherapy, 1991-2025
Book Details
- Publisher : Routledge
- Published : November 2026
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 354
- Category :
Child and Adolescent Studies - Category 2 :
Forthcoming - Catalogue No : 98600
- ISBN 13 : 9781041361046
- ISBN 10 : 1041361041
Also by Margaret Rustin
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This book brings together some of Margaret Rustin’s finest papers in the areas of infant observation, theory, research and literature. Drawing on more than 50 years of psychoanalytic practice, the author offers a richly layered exploration of the central place of close observation and imagination in illuminating the inner worlds of children and young people.
Illustrated with vivid clinical examples, the collection engages with a broad range of themes including the place of interpretation in child psychotherapy, the experience of shame in childhood, dreams and play in child analysis and the challenges of clinical research. A final section turns to literature and drama, tracing the vital connections between imagination and psychic life.
Essential reading for child psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and child analysts, as well as all those training as mental health professionals, this book will also appeal to anyone with an interest in the emotional dimensions of human experience.
Reviews and Endorsements
It is no easy task to capture the breadth of Margaret Rustin’s influence - her thinking, her teaching, her writing - within the field of child psychotherapy and the wider world of psychoanalysis. This volume of essays reflects the range of her contributions: theory, infant observation, drama, literature, research. In each of these domains, Margaret has been not only a pioneer with her own original insights but also a generous facilitator, nurturing the minds and careers of countless students and colleagues.
Her gift is most vividly seen in her commentaries on infant observation, a discipline at the heart of child psychotherapy training and a foundation for many psychoanalytic trainings. Here, Margaret’s capacity to illuminate the meanings of clinical work undertaken by others is particularly striking. She brings together rigorous psychoanalytic and philosophical inquiry with a wealth of clinical narrative, holding both in a delicate and creative balance.
What distinguishes her writing is the way her mind continually engages with and plays through stories. This quality lends her work a freshness that is rare: one reads her essays not only for their intellectual depth but also for the sheer pleasure of the prose, the imaginative stimulus of her reflections, and the vitality of the narratives she weaves. Margaret Rustin’s voice remains a source of inspiration - probing, generous, and alive to the possibilities of psychoanalytic thought.
Francis Grier, psychoanalyst; editor, International Journal of Psychoanalysis
This book of broadly theoretical papers -- the companion volume to Margaret Rustin's earlier clinical collection -- is the fruit of over 50 years of clinical child psychotherapy practice, and of decades as Head of Child Psychotherapy Training at the Tavistock and of international teaching and lecturing. It addresses central psychoanalytic themes, ranging from the theoretical underpinnings of didactic and participant infant observation to a virtuoso analysis of children's dreaming; from the fundamental principles underlying supervision and clinical research to the mutual enrichment of psychoanalysis and works of literature. The papers convey fundamental ideas and original innovations in simple language: always mind-expanding, often dazzling. The book will provide continuing inspiration to clinicians, but also to anyone interested in a psychoanalytic view of human cultural life, and indeed of human life more generally and of how it can be understood.
Maria Rhode, child analyst; professor emerita of Child Psychotherapy
From a lifetime’s work with children and adolescents suffering complex mental health difficulties, this book gathers a vivid collection of Margaret Rustin’s papers written for diverse audiences. Rustin’s writing is fresh and three dimensional, as if the reader is part of the workshops, supervision groups or inter-disciplinary discussions that have provided such fertile ground. It is filled with discoveries in contexts of considerable relevance, connecting the reader time and again with the creative possibilities of psychoanalytic work.
Rajni Sharma, consultant child & adolescent psychotherapist; director Northern School of Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy
Table of Contents
Section I: Observation
1. Beginning of the Mind (1999)
2. Esther Bick’s Legacy of Infant Observation at the Tavistock – some reflections 60 years on (2009)
3. Finding an Authentic Voice: Observation, intuition and the use of countertransference in work with children and adolescents (2006)
4. Struggles in becoming a mother: Reflections from a clinical and observational standpoint (2005)
Section II: Theory
5. The Place of Interpretation in Child Therapy: Making things meaningful (2015)
6. Shame in Childhood: Being ashamed of oneself, feeling shamed, and the burden of the shame of others (2016)
7. Beyond The Talion Principle: The early development of a moral sense (2012)
8. Doing Things Differently: An appreciation of Meltzer’s contribution (2015)
9. Dreams and Play in Child Analysis Today (2012)
Section III: Training and Research
10. Observation, Understanding and Interpretation: The story of a supervision (1998)
11. Some Reflections on Clinical Research in Child Psychotherapy (1985/2025)
12. Preserving a Psychoanalytic Attitude in Short-Term Psychotherapy: The challenge of working within a research framework (2018/2024)
Section IV: Literature
13. Where is Home? An essay on Philip Pullman's Northern Lights (Volume 1 of His Dark Materials) (2003/2024) (with Michael Rustin)
14. Fairy Tales and Children’s Hopes and Fears (2009/2013/2024)
15. The Myth of Narcissus and Echo: Reflections from child and adult psychotherapy (2019/2025)
16. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Meditations on marriage (2002/2024) (with Michael Rustin)
About the Author(s)
Margaret Rustin is a consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic, London, and an Associate of the British Psychoanalytical Society. 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.
More titles by Margaret Rustin
Kate Stratton is a child and adolescent psychotherapist in the Adolescent & Young Adult Service at the Tavistock Clinic where she also teaches and supervises. She is a former editor of the Journal of Child Psychotherapy, and co-editor of the Tavistock Clinic Series.
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