A Question of Technique

"Monica Lanyado and Anne Horne’s A Question of Technique also represents years of work, where two Independent practitioners have brought together a collection of excellent papers from colleagues about what actually happens in the therapy room, how you deal with pressures and make decisions which need to be taken on a daily basis. While Anne Alvarez could be thought of as an ‘independent Kleinian’, the contributors to this second book work out of the tradition of Winnicott. There is much here on the adolescent as well as the looked-after child, brief consultations as well as longer-term work – the book as a whole is full of what Anne Horne calls ‘interesting things to say’ and ponder on. In one of the final chapters Horne describes how she sat in the car with an adolescent with gender identity difficulties when he refused to come into the clinic, and how they laughed together when they were both then trapped by the child lock, just as he decided he could indeed get himself in to the consulting room. Was it ‘right’ to get in the car? Was it ‘right’ to laugh? Can psychotherapy sometimes be playful? Can we carry on discussing such issues as innovations rather than deviations? Together, these books represent the sort of grounded wisdom which drives theory and practice forward, in a discipline which continues to evolve. Its premises have been borne out by complementary research in child development and neuroscience, as the exploration continues into the ‘music’ of what happens, in life and in the consulting room."