Love the Wild Swan

Judith Edwards, PhD, MACP, is a former consultant child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapist who has worked at the Tavistock Clinic since the 1980s. She has been internationally published and is a past editor of the Journal of Child Psychotherapy. She edited the collection Being Alive (2001), and is the author of memoir Pieces of Molly: An Ordinary Life (Karnac, 2014)

'Like the Wild Swan glides, Judith Edwards' writing flows, with great elegance. Her wide ranging cultural interests combine with her clinical acumen, to open new ways of thinking. This book is a really interesting read, both for those in the profession, and beyond.' - Irma Brenman Pick, Distinguished Fellow and Child and Adult Psychoanalyst BPAS 'This is a wise and wonderful book of 'twisted tales', beautifully calibrated by reference to personal, clinical and cultural life. Coming to know oneself through Memoir is the solid and steady background of it all – the intensity of trying to expose and explore the self in the course of psychoanalytically based training and teaching across the life cycle, especially during childhood. Judith Edwards' writing offers a breadth and depth of reference that is both accessible and utterly refreshing. Beneath these lovely pages there lies, fundamentally, a focus on meaning – what does something really mean to someone? How does one gain access to that? Sorting it out, significantly through the quality and capacities for observation, both of self and other, makes genuine growth possible. Love the Wild Swan gives us an informed and moving contribution to this process.' - Margot Waddell, Fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, former consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist, and author of 'Inside Lives'. 'Judith Edwards is a Child Psychotherapist with wide-ranging interests and expertise. She has a special gift for appreciating and exploring the interconnections of clinical psychoanalytic practice with the arts.This impressive and scholarly volume includes some original contributions to vital topics within child psychotherapy, including work on the complexities of adoption, and chapters on psychoanalytic observation and theory and the challenges of teaching both in a spirit of enquiry. The breadth of her knowledge of literature,especially poetry, and film makes the section offering readings of individual works of art a pleasure to read. She writes with clarity and grace, which will enable her readers to engage in ideas arising from diverse fields of knowledge and culture with enjoyment. This is a book to open minds in many different directions and to interest many people.' - Margaret Rustin, former Head of Child Psychotherapy Training at the Tavistock Clinic'The writing of Judith Edwards has an imaginative spontaneity unusual in psychoanalytic papers, reflecting her conviction that the emotional complexities of the consulting room are enriched and clarified by free association to other fields, in particular to the various storytelling modes. Her empathic work with children bears testimony to her self-questioning and her belief in the need for vigilance in keeping theory ‘usable’ and in a constant state of refreshment.' - Meg Harris Williams, writer and artist

• Foreword General Introduction Section 1 1.Suffering, Weeping and other preoccupations: Darwin's observations and our present day practice 2 .Early Splitting and Projective Identification 3 Teaching Observation to non-clinical students Section 2 4: Towards solid ground: the ongoing journey of an adolescent boy with autistic features5. You can?€?t miss what you?€?ve never had. Can you? The challenges and struggles of single parenthood from a psychoanalytic perspective 6. On being dropped and picked up: The plight of some late adopted children Section 3 7. Teaching, learning and Bion?€?s Model of digestion 8. Before the threshold: Destruction, reparation and creativity before the depressive position 9. Ripples in mental space caused by dark matters and twisted tales: Some reflections on memory, memoirs and therapeutic work Section 4 10. Teaching and learning about psychoanalysis: Film as a teaching tool, with reference to a particular film, Morvern Callar 11. Sifting through the sands of time: Mourning and melancholia revisited through a film 12. Seeing and being seen: The dialectics of intimate space and Antony Gormley's Event Horizon 13.The elusive pursuit of insight: Three poems by W.B.Yeats and the human task