1st Edition
Quietly Subversive The Selected Works of Dilys Daws
This book gathers together selected papers and book chapters by Dilys Daws, covering her 50 years of pioneering work as a child psychotherapist.
It provides those working with parents, infants, and children with a means of learning from Daws’s decades of experience as a psychotherapist and therapeutic consultant, with plentiful case material illustrating her method of working in action. The first two sections of the book focus on her work as consultant psychotherapist in the baby clinic of a GP practice and her parent-infant work in this context as well as at the Tavistock and Portman Clinic. The third section explores her work with young children, focusing on questions around the therapeutic frame and setting. The fourth section features extended excerpts from her writings for the general public, most particularly aimed at new parents and parents with infants. Finally, the book also contains several short reflective pieces addressing themes to do with parent-infant work, the experience of the therapist, and the social role of psychoanalytic thinking.
This book will be of interest to all those working with parents and children, including doctors, health visitors, and social workers, as well as child psychotherapists and child psychoanalysts.
Foreword by Sebastian Kraemer. Memoir. Inroduction. Part 1: Therapeutic Consultancy: A Child Psychotherapist in a GP Practice 1. Standing Next to the Weighing Scales 2. Standing Next to the Weighing Scales 30 Years On 3. Psychoanalytic Thinking and Public Services: Can They Inspire Each Other? Part 2: Parent-Infant Psychotherapy and Infant Mental Health 4. Parent-Infant Psychotherapy: The Baby in the Consulting Room 5. Brief Psychoanalytic Therapy for Sleep Problems 6. Feeding Problems and Relationship Difficulties: Therapeutic work with Parents and Infants 7. The Perils of Intimacy: Closeness and Distance in Feeding and Weaning (1997) Part 3: Child Psychotherapy: the Frame and the Setting 8. Consent in Child Psychotherapy: The Conflicts for Child Patients, Parents and Professionals 9. Resistance and Co-operation: The Need for Both. A Further Study of Psychotherapy in a Day Unit Part 4: Writing for Parents 10. The One Year Old and His Family 11. Love and Hate 12. Crying Babies: Listening and Comforting 13. Your Baby’s Emerging Sense of Self Part 5: Reflections 14. Enlivened or Burnt Out? 15. Saying What You Mean, Or Meaning What You Say 16. Working at the Edge 17. Error and Repair 18. Rivalry with Fathers
Biography
Dilys Daws was Consultant Child Psychotherapist at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust where she was awarded a Doctorate and a visiting consultant at the baby clinic of the James Wigg Practice, Kentish Town. She was Chair of the Association of Child Psychotherapists, and Founder Chair of the Association for Infant Mental Health-UK. She has had 50 years of clinical and teaching experience, has lectured on child psychotherapy and infant mental health widely in the UK and abroad, and has politically lobbied for it.
Matthew Lumley has studied at the Tavistock and Portman, where he completed his Post-Graduate Diploma in Working with Children, Young People and Families: A Psychoanalytic Observational Approach. He has worked for many years with autistic children in both primary and secondary school settings, and for two years as an assistant psychotherapist in the Tavistock Outreach in Primary Schools programme.
"Dilys Daws has inspired generations of parents, children and fellow professionals. This beautiful collection of her writings reflects the enormous range of her work as a child psychotherapist, trainer, campaigner, and passionate supporter of primary care. She writes with clarity and simplicity. This book will continue to inspire many more people in the future."
– John Launer, GP; honorary consultant, Tavistock Clinic; honorary associate professor, UCL; Former associate dean at Health Education England
"In this collection of papers for the World Series, we finally have a fitting tribute to Daws' contribution to our field, and one that does justice to the breadth and scope of her work. Over the course of her career, Daws has changed the landscape both within child psychotherapy and without. She has fostered change within important allied professions and then worked collaboratively with those allies in psychiatry, health visiting and general medicine through clinical work, campaigning and lobbying. All this and her courage, compassion, curiosity and humour are evident in this important volume."
– Dr. Alexandra de Rementeria, Editor in Chief of the Journal of Child Psychotherapy; Lead Therapist with the Tavistock Outreach in Primary Schools project; M7 Assessment Tutor
"Based on over 50 years’ observations ‘standing next to the weighing scales’ and Dilys’ deep respect for health visitors, this immense collection is a must-read for everyone working with families who are experiencing difficulties. ‘Quietly Subversive’ reminds us to look beyond targets and tasks - families’ lives are changed when they feel seen, understood, and supported."
– Alison Morton, Executive Director, Institute of Health Visiting
