ABSTRACT
As practitioners we are aware of the urgent mental health needs of many of the children and young people who come to our attention. This means that we must assert the primacy of the needs of the child and young person and act as their advocates. This urgency requires fi rst and foremost a more open and critical dialogue about how our psychotherapeutic practice can address these urgent needs. It follows that the development of new theory must emerge directly from clinical practice, experience and observation, rather than from imposing theory that adheres primarily to established orthodoxies. In this book an attempt is made to provide a fresh perspective of the rich fi eld of psychodynamic understanding and how it can be applied to timelimited psychotherapy, not only with children and young people, but also with their parents and caregivers.
