Free Resources
BOOKS
Why Psychoanalysis?
By Elizabeth Roudinesco
Far from contesting the efficacy of new medications like Prozac, Zoloft and Viagra in alleviating the symptom of any number of mental or nervous conditions, Roudinesco argues that the use of such drugs fails to solve patients’ real problems. From the man who takes Viagra without ever wondering why he is suffering from impotence, to the woman who is given anti-depressants to deal with the loss of a loved one, to the adolescent experiencing a variety of mental disorders, who is simply prescribed Ritalin, Roudinesco sees a society that is obsessed with efficiency and desperate for the quick fix. In contrast, psychoanalysis testifies to human freedom and the power of language.
You can find the book here
Minding the Body – The body in psychoanalysis and beyond
By Alessandra Lemma
Minding the Body outlines the value of a psychoanalytic approach to understanding the body and its vicissitudes and for addressing these in the context of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. The chapters cover a broad but esoteric range of subjects that are not often discussed within psychoanalysis such as the function of breast augmentation surgery, the psychic origins of hair, the use made of the analyst’s toilet, transsexuality and the connection between dermatological conditions and necrophilic fantasies. The book also reaches ‘beyond the couch’ to consider the nature of reality television makeover show.
You can find the book here
Brief Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy: A Clinician's Guide
By Alessandra Lemma, Mary Target & Peter Fonagy
Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy (DIT) is a brief psychodynamic psychotherapy developed for the treatment of mood disorders.
This book is a user-friendly, practical guide for the implementation of a brief psychodynamic intervention in routine clinical practice as well as in research protocols. It sets out clearly the theoretical framework, as well as the rationale and strategies for applying DIT with patients presenting with mood disorders (depression and anxiety). Throughout, it is illustrated with detailed examples that help the reader to implement the approach in their practice.
You can find the book here
Introduction to the Practice of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
By Alessandra Lemma
Introduction to the Practice of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy provides up-to-date, practice-oriented coverage of the latest research and techniques in psychoanalysis. Distinguished clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Alessandra Lemma synthesizes decades of clinical experience and the latest research into actionable advice for developing analytic skills with clarity, confidence, and adaptability across diverse therapeutic settings.
You can find the book here
Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self
By Peter Fonagy et. al.
In a brilliant examination of the frontiers of human emotion and cognition, four prominent psychoanalysts combine the perspectives of developmental psychology, attachment theory, and psychoanalytic technique. The result of this marriage of the disciplines is a bold, energetic, and ultimately encouraging vision for psychoanalytic treatment. Historically, human emotion has been marginalized within the philosophy of the mind. Fonagy, Gengely, Jurist and Target argue instead for the importance of attachment and emotionality in the developing of consciousness, employing an extensive body of recent literature to support their claims.
You can find the book here
Other Psychotherapy Books:
Chodron, Pema. When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. Shambhala Classics
Formani, H (1990). Men – The Darker Continent. Heinemann, London
Herman, Nini (1988). My Kleinian Home – A journey through four psychotherapies. Free Association Books, London
Herman, Nini (1987). Why Psychotherapy? Free Association Books, London
Rethinking ADHD: Integrated Approaches to Helping Children at Home and at School
by Ruth Schmidt Neven, Vicki Anderson, and Tim Godber
Review by Roy Sugarman, PhD, Clinical Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales
The tiny book is packed with crisp and clear analyses of the nature of the problem. References to such luminaries in the field as Russ Barkley abound, and overall there must be more than 350 references in the 23 pages at the end of the book, as well as a comprehensive index.
Their approach homogenises a variety of thoughts we all have on this contentious issue, in many ways akin to the controversies in the autism spectrum, or perhaps any condition in childhood which presents somewhere between average behaviour and grossly unusual behaviour.
As the coming epidemic of mental illness threatens progress in the modern world, all of us in the West have come to question if the demands of modern capitalist life are not incompatible with wellness.
In 1995 and again in 1997, Christopher Green and Kit Chee wrote in their best-selling volume Understanding ADHD (London: Vermillion):
Certainly the “talking cures” have a place in managing the emotional problems of some parents, but not in treating ADHD. Formal family therapy is generally unhelpful, though clever psychiatrists use a less structured approach to help all members of a family work together to support their ADHD child…(p. 118)
A programme on which they appeared, on Granada television in the UK, logged over 7000 phone calls immediately. Such was the concern of parents then. But since then, as the Australian authors note, several truths have emerged:
ADHD aetiology has no Royal Road, but a multitude of paths lead to a common symptom
It’s not a syndrome, it’s too variable, resulting in variable rates of diagnosis
Different cultures see the problem differently
Even tight DSM-IV and ICD-10 formulations still allow for interpretation and subjectivity, with different rates of diagnosis
Stimulant medication improves performance in all children, not just ADHD, the extent of the improvement is what varies, not whether there is or isn’t change
These changes do not reliably have an outcome in the school setting
The primacy of the medical model has retarded progress in treatment, with no objective diagnostic methodology holding true
Current treatment approaches have run the risk of isolating the child, disempowering the parents, and ultimately the misdirection of treatment
Various forms of attempted diagnostic tools have proved unreliable and with questionable validity
There are gender issues in the historical feminisation of society
There is a bias towards diagnosis of minorities and lower socio-economic status groups
“Talking cures” are a valid part of the treatment, not just the disabilities that flow from the impairment
Medication is more readily dispensed to those in institutional care
Geographic area appears to influence diagnosis statistics
Small numbers of practitioners account for disproportionately large numbers of prescriptions for stimulants
As an illness of our time, ADHD may indeed reflect child rearing practice in a society which has changed considerably under the influence of modern capitalist demographics, including dependence on day-care which may not meet the understood needs of children at various stages in their lives, depending on various stages of brain development
The authors quote a leading Australian commentator who notes that the minute you see such variations like this in medicine and mental health, you are looking opinion-based, not evidence-based medical practice.
What the authors do in this book is try to move away from linear approaches such as the narrowly defined medical model, to a more cybernetic, second order system which would see the psycho or neuropathology as embedded within the interactions between child and social substrate, not within the skin of the child. Hence the blind application of a germ or disease-centred medical model, using curative medication or intervention, would fail, given the multifactorial picture they paint.
Instead, and in keeping with modern psychiatric philosophy, they advocate for a bio-psycho-social model in the Engel sense. This would answer the questions different, viz:
Not what a single causative agent makes this child ill? (what diagnosis?), but rather:
Why has this child produced these symptoms at this stage of his/her life?
However, the authors make it plain that we should not fall into the linear epistemological trap of assuming that the environment causes the child to become ill, or its genes cause it to become ill, or some milieu events cause it to become ill. This is again, linear, cause-effect relationship, anathematic to circular second order cybernetic feedback thinking.
In the interaction of the genes, the family, the school, the world, the thoughts, the endocrines, the stem cells, the cytokines, the chandelier cells, the loud words, absence, separation, working parents, lousy child care, grief, emigration, loud TV, and any one of the hundreds of causal chains and context markers, a pattern connects which represents how this child, at this time of its life, demonstrates the symptoms of ADHD, and communicates this in producing symptoms.
The medical or other linear models thus produce and represent punctuation points, or father focal points in a complex system, descriptions, not explanations, which result from a cross-sectional slice approach to diagnosis, rather than a developmental framework. The authors here are advocating a much more comprehensive series of interventions. The epistemology above certainly represents the thinking of Family Therapy, of a more global determinism than the biology, or social or psychological domains of development would represent. We must remember that in neuropsychology, a concatenation of symptoms does not represent a syndrome, nor does linear definition of test outcomes provide meaningful data.
This is not war on the medical model, but a call for intervention from multidisciplinary teams. If one cannot eliminate the complex chain of events ending with the phenotype of impairment represented by ADHD, then one must intervene within society, avoiding a disposal diagnosis, recognising that medication is not the cure, avoiding coalitions against the child, containing their anxiety, accepting psychodynamic principals that all, including bad, behaviour is meaningful, the need for appropriate authority and the knowledge of the important of containing and supporting boundaries, working as partners with parents and teachers, improving child care arrangements, bridging the gap between home and school, dealing with separation and divorce, making positive changes in the school environment, supporting boys in the face of the demands of modern and future societies, and most critical, working with prevention in the wider social and political context.
This is a most important work, and with a wide audience, readable by everyone, even the damned parents. It really is a crucial reading, given its evidence base, that psychiatrists, psychologists, teachers, general practitioners, magistrates, judges and politicians become aware of the problems facing those who rear and mind children in the 21st Century, not just for ADHD, but the whole wide and varied spectrum of mental disorders.
This book is really well done. The last chapters need a great deal more detail and planning if the advocacy of such an approach is to go ahead. The post-modern view is really overdue, and the deconstruction of the terms we use is now a demand of the biopsychosocial model, and of the consumer.
The Tavistock Clinic: Understanding Your Child Series
The series covers key developmental stages, with tailored titles for specific age brackets.
Early Childhood:
Understanding Your Baby
Understanding Your 1-Year-Old
Understanding Your 2-Year-Old
Understanding Your 3-Year-Old
Middle Childhood:
Understanding 4-5-Year-Olds
Understanding Your 6-7-Year-Olds (and up to age 11)
The Teenage Years:
Understanding 12-14-Year-Olds
Understanding 15-17-Year-Olds
You can find all links to all the books and more resources from the Tavistock clinic here.
Lectures
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Lecture UOW 2024
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Lecture UOW 2024
2025 AAGP Open day Lecture MRG AHLIN 08 03 2025 Part 1 Vera Auerbach
2025 AAGP Open day Lecture MRG AHLIN 08 03 2025 Part 1 Vera Auerbach
2025 AAGP Open day Lecture MRG AHLIN 08 03 2025 Part 2 Vera Auerbach
2025 AAGP Open day Lecture MRG AHLIN 08 03 2025 recording part 2 continued
Comment on Anne Alvarez, PhD, M.A.C.P is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist (and retired Co-Convener of the Autism Service, Child and Family Dept.. Tavistock Clinic, London).