ABSTRACT
Most individuals referred to the Unit are offered a four session consultation as an initial intervention. The consultation is offered only when the individual requests it, perhaps via a professional referrer, rather than as a standard intervention following a traumatic event; not everybody will need professional help. Some are able to re-establish their capacity to cope with a time-limited intervention because it is possible for the therapist to mobilise the individual's own resources, which previously sustained them, so that they can then function independently. The consultation is therefore not an assessment alone, but a therapeutic intervention. Nor, at the outset, would it be helpful to offer a more long term ongoing psychoanalytic intervention. As with all psychoanalytic clinical work, the consultation is not structured by the therapist's providing directions and themes, and there is an emphasis on the therapist's following rather than leading, allowing for the emergence of transference and countertransference.
