Developmental (London) school

Domain I · Psychodynamic & depth psychology · Michael Fordham, Joseph Redfearn · 1944 · London

What it is

This is mainly a theoretical and clinical framework, not a manualised therapy: there is no session-by-session protocol, and Fordham presents technique as arising from the analyst's whole personality in interaction with the patient rather than from rules. What follows gives the techniques its…

Format

• No fixed phases or session counts are prescribed by Fordham; the stages below follow the chapter sequence of Jungian Psychotherapy (setting → starting analysis → transference/countertransference → resistance → interpretation → analysis of childhood and its limits → active imagination → termination)…
• Goals: let infantile and archetypal experience emerge in the relationship; interpret transference, resistance and defences; reconstruct where useful; repeated deintegration–reintegration within sessions and across breaks.

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Format. Analysis: 4–5 sessions/week (SAP requires its trainees' own analysis at this frequency), 50-minute sessions, couch usually available, open-ended over years. Analytical psychotherapy: 1–3 sessions/week, chair or couch. — standard SAP practice, not confirmed in a source] Children: regular sessions in a consistent playroom with play materials, drawing and paint, plus separate contact with parents. Typical…
• Children (child analytic version). Same sequence, compressed and through play; the child's own transference is analysed directly rather than treated only through the parents, which was Fordham's departure from Jung's early view.
• Version followed: the London "developmental school" of analytical psychology as set out by Michael Fordham in Jungian Psychotherapy (1978), Explorations into the Self (1985), Children as Individuals (1969 rev. of The Life of Childhood, 1944) and the technique papers collected in Analyst-Patient Interaction (1996: "Notes on the transference" 1957, "Technique and counter-transference" 1969, "Defences of the self"…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• How do you and the practitioner understand what is happening, in spiritual or cultural terms? Is that a source of comfort, worry, or both?
• Does it use a device, heat, cold, water or a physical procedure? Has a medical professional checked that it is safe for you?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• Pictures used to please you. It is working when the images develop over time alongside the analysis.
• Treating resistance as opposition rather than protection. It is working when resistance turns into material.
• Illusion that goes unrecognised and turns into acting out. It is working when you can see the patient freshly again.
• Idealising self-symbols or using them to bypass ordinary relating. It is working when they coincide with more stable functioning.
• Synthetic interpretation used to skip painful infantile material. It is working when the patient takes up and uses the new capacity.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.