Dr Frances Thomson-Salo

Associate Professor and Child Psychotherapist

Dr Frances Thomson-Salo trained with the British Psychoanalytic Society as a child and adult psychoanalyst before moving to Australia. There she worked as a senior child psychotherapist in the Royal Children’s Hospital for 30 years, specialising in infant mental health, and was the Infant Mental Health Consultant, Royal Women’s Hospital for 15 years. She was an Associate Professor on the University of Melbourne Grad Dip/Masters in Infant Mental Health for 20 years and also taught internationally. She has written and edited a number of papers and books on infant observation, infant mental health and child psychotherapy, including Engaging infants: Embodied Communication in short-term infant-parent therapy (2019) and Infant observation: Creating transformative relationships (2014). She has an interest in what brings about therapeutic change, including for infants who have experienced sexual abuse and how they begin to integrate and heal.