Clinical commentary by Dr Amanda Jones, Clinical Lead, North East London NHS Foundation Trust, Perinatal Parent Infant Mental Health Service

摘要

I finished reading the clinical material and noticed how irritated I had come to feel. When I re-read it, my discomfort grew. I felt unusually critical. Given that the actual material does not warrant such a response, what was going on within me? Who was I identifying with such that I wanted to reject the material in a critical way? It was disconcerting: after all, a thoughtful therapist had described a third session with a 15-year-old mother and her two-month-old baby, yet I felt judgmental and, at first, critical of her potentially creative questions, interpretations and embodied actions. There are many possibilities for my experience, several of which could be simultaneously relevant. What follows is one hypothesis.