March Trust Scientific Meeting: Playing the Mind

Monday 13 March, 11:30am to 1pm

Let’s play! Play is important in analysis with patients of all ages – with adults we may be able to play with words, ideas and metaphor – but with children we play in more physical ways. In this Trust Scientific Meeting Marianne Parsons presents her paper ‘Playing the Mind’. The paper brings three very different child patients who were unable to play at first but became able to use play creatively to represent and work through their internal states of mind and make developmental progress. The paper emphasises the need for a setting in which play can unfold safely and spontaneously without intrusive interpretations. It addresses the importance of the analyst as a developmental object, and also as a partner who engages with the play in a fine-tuned way to suit the needs of each individual child. Katy Dearnley will chair this Trust Scientific Meeting.

Marianne Parsons is a child, adolescent and adult psychoanalyst now working in private practice. After a career as a music teacher and in special education with autistic, psychotic and brain-damaged children, she trained in child analysis in the 1980s at the Hampstead Clinic, later renamed the Anna Freud Centre. Soon after qualifying she became Head of Clinical Training there, then worked for 19 years as Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at the Portman Clinic. She was in the Violence Research Workshop under Mervin Glasser and was Course Director of the Portman Clinic Diploma in Forensic Psychotherapeutic Studies. In the 1990s she trained as an adult analyst at the British Society. She was Editor of the Journal of Child Psychotherapy, has contributed several papers to books and journals, and teaches and supervises widely on many psychoanalytic trainings in the UK and abroad.

Katy Dearnley is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist in the South Camden Community CAMHS team and has worked for more than 25 years with children and their families. In 2017 she qualified as a parent-infant psychotherapist and has set up three parent-infant psychotherapy services during her working life. Katy has a long standing interest in integrating psychoanalytic understanding into children’s centres and day care settings. Katy teaches and supervises on a variety of Tavistock courses and lectures nationally and internationally.

Joining the meeting

To join the meeting, please click the link below. Trust Scientific Meetings are exclusive events for our alumni, students, staff and members of the Tavistock Society of Psychotherapists – please do not distribute the event link further.

https://eu01web.zoom.us/j/69545316680?pwd=L1oyUnNUdFliR1pBK0ttRTFiVzJjdz09

Meeting Passcode: 568230