What do child psychotherapists know?

In the decades after the death of Freud in 1939, the psychoanalytic tradition in Britain was substantially shaped by child analysis. Melanie Klein’s discoveries emerged from psychoanalytic practice with children, which was based on ‘play technique’. Some of Donald Winnicott’s most important ideas were developed through work with children, and through study of the relationships between mothers and babies. In this book chapter Professor Rustin argues that the theoretical advances of the 1940s and 1950s in the British psychoanalytic tradition could not have occurred without the priority given to the psychoanalysis of children, and the corpus of ideas and techniques with which British analysts now work can scarcely be imagined without that contribution. The chapter concludes that there is much to be learned from the participation of psychoanalysts and child psychotherapists in this growing debate about methods of research