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Chapter Two Part One – Literature review - Page 44
enable in the hands of trainee psychoanalytic psychotherapists. Their work is consonant
with the approach in the semester under study, although more focussed, as is Ogden’s,
on learning within ongoing professional development than learning as part of formal
training
Thorndeycroft and McCabe (2008) offer a description of a coherent model to develop
much needed reflective practice in clinical services in mental health. This is useful in
highlighting the importance of participant engagement, and the way in which (much as
in the case of the semester under study) deeply distressing experience can be
experienced and expressed in unconscious ways by staff members and psychotherapy
students alike. Their work is valuable in recognising the need for explicit structure, as
well as aspects of phenomena that will occur during these types of activity, but again, is
more directed to the maintenance and development of ongoing practice.
The practice tradition of discussion of clinical work, particularly that of general medical
practitioners, based on the work of the psychoanalyst Michael Balint (1957) has many
elements in common with the approach taken in the semester under study. Balint’s
approach has continued to thrive, and latterly been extended to the work of other
clinical disciplines, and by the addition of other theoretical concepts, particularly (as in
this study) by the inclusion of aspects of the theories of Bion (1962a) (e.g. Rüth, 2009).
As in the semester, in a Balint group the presenter makes their work available to the
group, but then sits back from the ensuing discussion, in which group members are
asked to speak from their own experience of the material under discussion. However,
despite the similarities, the purpose of the seminar under study is training rather than
support for clinical practice, and the deliberate obscuring of practical details in the
seminar is not equivalent to the de-emphasis on practical details in the Balint approach.