Exploring Psychoanalytic Concepts through Culture, the Arts and Contemporary Life

Dr Margaret Lush is a Tavistock trained Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist who has worked in clinical and educational settings. She has taught on several Tavistock courses and is currently Joint Course Lead for the Tavistock pre-clinical training course for Child Psychotherapists. She works in private practice and supervises in Britain and abroad. Kate Robertson, trained as a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic and became Head of Child Psychotherapy in Hammersmith and Fulham CAMHS, course lead for the Tavistock Psychoanalytic Studies course and Chair of the Association of Child Psychotherapists. She had to retire early because of health concerns and passed away in October 2023.

Part 1. Learning through infant observation 1. Teaching infant observation 2. Sam: Observations and reflections on the first eighteen months of life 3. An exploration of a nursery song “The Police Dog” as a Container 4.“Mother- less”: a psychoanalytic observation of an installation by Cathy Wilkes 5. The is-ness of things: reflections on observation used in contexts where words are hard to find Part 2.Poetry 6. This is not for tears: thinking. Poetry and psychoanalysis in orbit 7. Of Mutability, mourning and containment 8. Resistance through mourning: a poem by Mahmoud Darwish “In Her Absence I Created Her Image” Part 3. Literature and the performing arts 9. The teaching of drama, psychoanalysis and society on the Psychoanalytic Studies course 10. Rockaby: Eros and Thanatos 11. The narcissistic world of Turandot 12. Identity, identification and narcissistic phantasy in the novels of Kazuo Ishiguro Part 4. Contemporary life 13. Psy’s “Gentleman”: between the ugly and the beautiful 14. Living the Dream: a psychoanalytic exploration of the sport of Base Jumping 15. The hidden inner world of litter picking 16. Beyond competence in social work: where are we now?