Introduction

This book is based on models of assessment for psychotherapy practised at the Tavistock Clinic. Much of this work has a great deal in common with good professional practice within many child and adolescent mental health services, but there are some distinctive features of approach which link the writers, a sort of ‘family resemblance’ in the authors’ modes of thinking, which are to do with their shared underlying psychoanalytic frame of reference. This introductory overview will attempt to describe the setting of the clinical work and to delineate some core features of our theory and practice.