Introduction

The psychoanalytic tradition, with its emphasis on the importance of childhood experience, is now just over one hundred years old. Early papers on work with child patients began to appear about eighty years ago (Hug-Hellmuth 1912; Sokolnicka 1920; Freud, A. 1926; Klein 1927). Trainings in child and adolescent psychotherapy began in the UK in the 1930s and 1940s, consolidating in 1949 in the formation of the Association of Child Psychotherapists, which today accredits courses and sets standards for membership of the profession. As a young profession, operating mainly within the National Health Service in the UK, child and adolescent psychotherapy has not only survived but has reached a maturity.