Developmental (London) school

1. Introduction

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" 1974, "How I do analysis" 1988, "On not knowing beforehand" 1993), plus Joseph Redfearn's My Self, My Many Selves (1985) for sub-personalities, as practised in Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP) training. Where these differ from Zurich/classical Jungian practice, the SAP/Fordham line is followed. [source: Routledge TOCs of Fordham 1978, 1985, 1996; SAP pages]

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 authors describe and marks derived applications as [synthesis].

Core idea of change: everyone starts as a primary self, an integrated psychosomatic whole that grows by deintegrating (reaching out to meet the environment, e.g. a hungry baby signalling and being fed) and reintegrating (taking that experience back in, e.g. falling asleep after the feed). Disturbance arises where experiences are split off or the ego disintegrates instead of being reintegrated. In analysis the same rhythm recurs: the patient's infantile and archetypal experience is relived in the transference, the analyst receives it (partly through syntonic countertransference) and returns it through interpretation, so that split-off parts can be reintegrated and the self can resume its development (individuation, which for Fordham runs from infancy onward, not only in the second half of life). [source: Urban, SAP "Fordham's Model of Development"; SAP Fordham page; Lambert 1981 via Goodreads reprint] Redfearn adds that the felt sense of "I" migrates among many sub-selves; analysis opens communication between them. [source: Routledge description of Redfearn 1985]

2. Framework

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) and SAP teaching that solid transference analysis must come before deeper work on the self. [source: Fordham 1978 TOC; SAP Fordham page] Phase boundaries and criteria are [synthesis].

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. [source: SAP adult training page for 4–5x weekly; couch and session length [uncertain] — 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. [source: Cambridge obituary; Fordham 1969] Typical duration: several years for analysis; Fordham gives no count. [uncertain]

Stage A — Assessment and starting analysis (first 1–3 meetings, then the first weeks)

Goals: decide whether analysis or less intensive therapy fits; set the frame (times, frequency, fees, breaks, couch/chair); note the first transference signs and any initial dream. [source: Fordham 1978 chs "The setting of analysis", "Starting analysis" — content [uncertain]]
Move on when: the frame is agreed and holding, and the patient can bring material regularly. [synthesis]

Stage B — Transference analysis and analysis of childhood (the main body, usually years)

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. [source: Fordham 1978 TOC; obituary on analysis of infantile wishes and defences]
Move on when: the patient can tolerate and use transference interpretations, split-off parts reappear and are owned, and breaks are survived without collapse. [synthesis]

Stage C — Work on the self and individuation (overlaps with B)

Goals: self-symbols, imaginative activity and active imagination become usable as the patient's own; the ego can yield to reintegrative and creative processes (Fordham's added marker of maturity). [source: Lambert 1981 on Fordham's seventh ego function; Fordham 1978 ch. "The origins of active imagination"]
Move on when: the patient shows self-analytic capacity and a stable sense of self that does not depend on the analyst's presence. [synthesis]

Stage D — Termination (months)

Goals: work through ending in the transference; the date is set well in advance. [source: Fordham 1978 ch. "Terminating analysis"; specifics [uncertain]]

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. [source: Cambridge obituary; Wikipedia Fordham for the 1970s SAP child training]

3. Guiding principles

[source for this section: Fordham 1957, 1969, 1974, 1993 as described in secondary pages; SAP pages; Urban; Redfearn 1985 description. Precise wording of Fordham's 1974 and 1993 papers is [uncertain] on detail.]

The self is active from the start. Treat even a very disturbed adult or child as an individual with their own organising centre, not as an empty product of the environment. Practical: look for the patient's own initiative and organisation, even in chaos.
Deintegration is not disintegration. Reaching out and partial unravelling are healthy; fragmentation and splitting are not. Practical: don't treat every regression or upset as breakdown; ask whether it is heading toward reintegration.
Transference first. Solid analysis of the transference comes before deeper work on the self or archetypal material. Practical: when in doubt, interpret what is happening between you and the patient now.
Infancy lives in the adult. Adult disturbance is read through early mother–infant experience. Practical: listen for infantile states (feeding, being held, separation, intrusion) in adult material.
The analyst's whole personality is the instrument. Fordham gave up "persona" techniques; responses are "created on every occasion out of his unconscious" (Fordham 1969, as quoted in secondary source). Practical: no stock phrases; let your response come from your actual state, then think about it.
The analyst also deintegrates. To meet the patient the analyst lets parts of the self go out to them, then reintegrates and thinks. Practical: allow yourself to be affected before you formulate.
Syntonic vs illusory countertransference. Some reactions are the patient's unconscious taken into you (syntonic: usable); others are your own unresolved past displacing the patient (illusory: needs your own work). [source: Fordham 1957 via secondary] The commonly paired term "dystonic" countertransference could not be confirmed as Fordham's own word. [uncertain] Practical: ask "is this feeling information about the patient or about me?" before using it.
Not knowing beforehand. Enter sessions without fixing on what you already know about the patient or on theory. [source: Fordham 1993 title; content [uncertain]] Practical: let the session's material arrive before choosing an interpretation.
Interpretation is the main intervention. Advice, reassurance, self-disclosure and prescribed exercises are used sparingly because they dilute or defend against the transference. [source: secondary summary of Fordham on analytic reserve] Practical: prefer understanding spoken back to doing something.
Amplification and active imagination can be defences. Fordham warned they can be used by either party to avoid the transference. Practical: use them later and only when the patient generates them, not as a way out of a difficult moment.
Asymmetry within mutuality. Both are changed, but the relationship is asymmetrical: the analyst is trained and analysed. Practical: own your part without handing the patient responsibility for your reactions.
Defences of the self. Some patients experience the analyst and interpretations as alien, threatening "not-self" and fight them off totally. [source: Fordham 1974 chapter title; content [uncertain]] Practical: survive attacks, stop over-interpreting, and keep listening.
Scientific attitude. Fordham called his method scientific: think about emotional experience and rely on clinical evidence rather than doctrine. Practical: hold Jung's theory loosely and test it against what happens in the room.
Many selves (Redfearn). The feeling of "I" moves among sub-personalities (archetypes, complexes, body states). Practical: notice which "I" is speaking and help the parts talk to one another rather than letting one take over.
Supervision and own analysis. Fordham wrote on supervision and on training analysis; the analyst's own analysis is the main tool for spotting illusory countertransference. [source: 1996 TOC] Practical: take repetitive stuck feelings to consultation.

4. Intervention inventory

These are the techniques Fordham and Redfearn describe, plus the SAP training practices that shape the analyst. Step lists turn their descriptive writing into usable sequences and are partly [synthesis]. All example language is illustrative. [source for section: Fordham 1978 and 1996 TOCs; secondary summaries of Fordham 1957/1969; Urban; Cambridge obituary; Redfearn 1985 description; SAP pages]

4.1 Setting and holding the analytic frame

Purpose / when: From the first meeting onward. The fixed setting (same room, times, frequency, length, fees, notice of breaks) is the container in which deintegration can safely happen. Fordham gives the setting its own chapter. [source: Fordham 1978 TOC; detail [synthesis]]
Steps: (1) Agree frequency based on the assessment: 4–5x weekly for analysis, 1–3x for psychotherapy. (2) State times, session length, fees, the cancellation policy and how breaks are announced. (3) Offer the couch for analysis when the patient can tolerate losing sight of you; otherwise use the chair. (4) Announce breaks well ahead and keep to them. (5) Treat every later request to change the frame as material to understand before you act on it.
Example language (illustrative): "We'll meet four times a week at these times, for fifty minutes. I'll tell you about my breaks well in advance. If something about the arrangement troubles you, it's worth bringing here rather than just changing it."
Watch for: Lateness, missed sessions, fee issues and break reactions as transference communications. It is working when the patient starts reacting to the frame, for example missing you at weekends, and can talk about it.

4.2 Assessment and starting analysis

Purpose / when: Before committing to treatment. Decide on analysis vs psychotherapy vs referral, and gauge ego strength and the risk of disintegration. [source: Fordham 1978 ch. "Starting analysis"; content [uncertain]]
Steps: (1) Take the presenting problem, history, early childhood and family as the patient tells them, without pressing for a full history. (2) Ask for dreams, including any initial dream. (3) Make one or two trial interpretations of what is happening between you, and note how they are used. (4) Assess for psychotic or borderline features and risk, using standard risk assessment for suicidality. (5) Recommend a frequency and setting, and agree a trial period if unsure.
Example language (illustrative): "You've told me a lot about how others let you down. I wonder whether you're already watching to see if I will too."
Watch for: How the patient responds to a trial transference interpretation. Using it suggests suitability for analysis; total rejection may point to defences of the self (see 4.11) and the need for a slower, more holding approach.

4.3 Listening without knowing beforehand

Purpose / when: Every session. Let the patient's material and your own responses form freely before you shape them with prior knowledge or theory. [source: Fordham 1993 title; detail [uncertain]; links to Fordham's 1969 rejection of persona technique]
Steps: (1) Before the session, put aside the case formulation and last session's conclusions. (2) Listen to the words, the patient's bodily state, the sequence of themes and your own reactions. (3) Tolerate not understanding for a while. (4) Let a pattern emerge from this session's material before you interpret. (5) Afterwards, check it against what you knew.
Example language (illustrative): Mostly silence. When needed: "I'm not sure yet what's happening today. Let's see."
Watch for: Interpretations that you could have written before the session are a warning sign. It is working when your interpretations surprise you as well as the patient.

4.4 Using syntonic countertransference

Purpose / when: When you have a feeling, image, bodily state or impulse that seems foreign to you. Fordham (1957) held that, through primitive identity with the patient, the analyst can take in and experience parts of the patient's unconscious, which later becomes interpretable. [source: Fordham 1957 via secondary summary]
Steps: (1) Notice the reaction without acting on it. (2) Ask whether it fits your own history and current life (likely illusory) or belongs to the patient's material (possibly syntonic). (3) Hold it while the session goes on and look for confirming material. (4) Turn it into an interpretation about the patient's experience. Don't disclose your own feeling. (5) Check the patient's response.
Example language (illustrative): After feeling unaccountably useless: "I think you may be showing me how it feels to be with someone and have nothing you can give that's wanted."
Watch for: Turning countertransference into a confession, which Fordham warned against through self-disclosure and premature countertransference interpretations. It is working when the interpretation brings new material or a shift in feeling rather than compliance.

4.5 Recognising and working through illusory countertransference

Purpose / when: When the work stalls, you feel repeatedly the same way across different patients, or you notice irritation, rescuing or erotic preoccupation. Fordham's "countertransference illusion" replaces the patient with figures from the analyst's past. It is not always a disaster if it is recognised. [source: Fordham 1957 via secondary]
Steps: (1) Note any repetitive pattern. (2) Look at it in your own analysis or with a consultant. (3) In session, look for what you missed while the illusion was operating. (4) Repair by interpreting what the patient experienced of you, without a detailed confession.
Example language (illustrative): "I think last week I pushed my own view on you, and you went along with it. I wonder what that was like."
Watch for: Illusion that goes unrecognised and turns into acting out. It is working when you can see the patient freshly again.

4.6 Allowing the analyst's own deintegration (interactional stance)

Purpose / when: Throughout. Fordham (1969) described the analyst's response as adapted to the patient's needs, like a good-enough mother, and drawn from his unconscious rather than a persona. [source: secondary summary of Fordham 1969; quote "created on every occasion out of his unconscious"]
Steps: (1) Let yourself be affected and drawn into the patient's world for a while. (2) Notice when you have been pulled into a role. (3) Step back and think (reintegrate). (4) Speak from that integrated understanding.
Example language (illustrative): No set wording. The marker is that your phrasing follows the patient's idiom, not yours.
Watch for: Overidentification, where you lose the analytic position, or defensive withdrawal into technique. Plaut's comment on "not incarnating the archetype" addresses this risk. [source: 1974 Technique TOC] It is working when you can move between feeling with the patient and thinking about them.

4.7 Transference interpretation

Purpose / when: This is the central intervention, used whenever the relationship carries the live issue (separation, dependence, envy, idealisation, persecution). For Fordham, solid transference analysis comes before deeper self work. [source: SAP Fordham page; obituary; Fordham 1974 "Jung's conception of transference"]
Steps: (1) Identify the current anxiety in the session. (2) Locate it in the relationship with you ("here and now"). (3) Name the defence against it. (4) Link it, when the moment is ripe, to infantile experience and figures. (5) Keep the interpretation brief and wait.
Example language (illustrative): "Since I mentioned the Easter break you've been telling me how little our sessions matter. Perhaps it's easier to feel I don't matter than to feel left."
Watch for: Interpreting the transference by rote, or using it to avoid the patient's outside life. It is working when the patient brings associations, dreams or feelings that confirm or extend the interpretation.

4.8 Reductive (genetic) interpretation and reconstruction of childhood

Purpose / when: When adult patterns repeat infantile ones. Use it to link present experience to early mother–infant and family experience. Fordham devotes a chapter to "the analysis of childhood and its limits." [source: Fordham 1978 TOC; Technique in Jungian Analysis 1974, chapter "Some notes on the process of reconstruction"; detail [uncertain]]
Steps: (1) Interpret in the transference first. (2) When the pattern is clearly alive between you, link it to an early situation the patient has described or that dreams suggest. (3) Frame the reconstruction as a hypothesis. (4) Return to the present.
Example language (illustrative): "When I'm a minute late you go cold and distant. It sounds like what you described with your mother after your brother was born: better to stop wanting than to wait."
Watch for: The limits Fordham flags: reconstruction can become intellectual or a way to blame the past, and it doesn't reach the self's own creative or prospective activity. It is working when it brings affect and memory, not just agreement.

4.9 Synthetic (prospective) interpretation

Purpose / when: This is the Jungian complement to reduction, used when material points to development, purpose or emerging capacities rather than repetition. Fordham kept Jung's prospective view but placed it after transference work. [source: SAP Fordham page on the prospective psyche; Fordham 1978 ch. "Jung's conception of psychotherapy"; balance [synthesis]]
Steps: (1) Notice material that is new rather than repetitive, such as new figures in dreams or new capacities. (2) Name what it might be moving toward. (3) Keep it tentative and tied to evidence in the session.
Example language (illustrative): "The child in your dream is building something on her own for the first time. Something in you may be trying out being able to do without me for a while."
Watch for: Synthetic interpretation used to skip painful infantile material. It is working when the patient takes up and uses the new capacity.

4.10 Dream analysis

Purpose / when: Whenever dreams are brought. Fordham gives dreams their own chapter and, in the SAP tradition, reads them both for their own content and for what they say about the transference. [source: Fordham 1978 TOC "Dreams"; obituary on dream work in his own analysis; method detail [uncertain]]
Steps: (1) Let the patient tell the dream and their associations. (2) Notice when it was dreamt (around breaks or after a key session) and how it is told to you. (3) Link dream figures to the transference where the evidence supports it. (4) Consider subjective-level readings, where figures are parts of the patient, and objective-level readings. (5) Interpret briefly and leave room.
Example language (illustrative): "You dreamt of a doctor who didn't look up from his notes, the night after I mentioned the holiday. I wonder if that's how I seemed."
Watch for: Dreams brought to please you or to fill time. It is working when dreams change across the analysis and the patient begins to understand their own.

4.11 Working with defences of the self

Purpose / when: With patients, often narcissistic, borderline or near-psychotic, who experience the analyst and interpretations as dangerous "not-self" and reject, empty out, twist or attack them. Fordham (1974) described this as the self defending its integrity in a total way. [source: Fordham 1974 and 1985 chapter titles; Fordham's precise recommendations [uncertain]. The steps below follow the commonly reported gist: stop interpreting from preconceptions, listen, survive.]
Steps: (1) Recognise the pattern: every interpretation is rejected or turned against you, and you feel useless, attacked or tempted to argue. (2) Stop saying more. Fewer, shorter interpretations, and none defending yourself. (3) Listen closely to what the patient is actually saying, including their criticisms of you. (4) Tolerate being the bad, alien object without retaliating or collapsing. (5) When you can, describe the patient's need to keep you out, without pressing. (6) Use supervision to process your own persecution.
Example language (illustrative): "It seems that whatever I say feels like something pushed into you that you have to get rid of. Maybe I need to listen more and say less for now."
Watch for: Counter-attack, appeasement, or turning interpretation into argument. It is working when the patient begins to let some of your words in and show curiosity.

4.12 Analysis of resistance and counter-resistance

Purpose / when: When the patient is silent, evasive, intellectualising or unproductive, and when you notice your own reluctance. Fordham pairs resistance with counter-resistance. [source: Fordham 1978 ch. "Resistance and counter-resistance"; detail [uncertain]]
Steps: (1) Describe the resistance as it shows in the session. (2) Explore the anxiety it protects against, especially in the transference. (3) Check yourself: are you avoiding something too, for example by keeping sessions pleasant? (4) Interpret the shared avoidance if both of you are in it.
Example language (illustrative): "We've had several easy sessions. I wonder whether we're both steering around how angry you were before the weekend."
Watch for: Treating resistance as opposition rather than protection. It is working when resistance turns into material.

4.13 Amplification (used sparingly)

Purpose / when: Use it when archetypal images appear that the patient can't relate to personal experience and they seem stuck with them. Fordham treated amplification critically: it can serve as a defence against transference. [source: Fordham 1978 ch. "Amplification and active imagination"; secondary summary on analytic reserve]
Steps: (1) First explore personal associations and the transference. (2) Only if an image stays opaque and overwhelming, offer a brief parallel from myth, religion or folklore. (3) Bring it back to the patient's experience and to the relationship.
Example language (illustrative): "Stories of being swallowed by a great fish often describe a dark time before coming out changed. I wonder if that's what being in here feels like at the moment."
Watch for: Analyst or patient lecturing, or a sense of awe replacing feeling. It is working when the parallel makes personal feeling more available.

4.14 Imaginative activity and active imagination

Purpose / when: Later in analysis, when the ego is strong enough to engage with images without being swamped. Fordham traced a possible root of active imagination to infant play and imaginative activity, and distinguished it from ordinary fantasy. [source: Fordham 1978 ch. "The origins of active imagination"; Fordham 1985 ch. "A possible root of active imagination"; distinction [uncertain]]
Steps: (1) Don't prescribe it. Wait for the patient to report spontaneously working with images, painting or writing between sessions. (2) Treat what they bring as material, including its place in the transference: is it shared with you or kept from you? (3) Support the ego in keeping a conscious stance toward the images. (4) Watch for signs of flooding.
Example language (illustrative): "You've started talking to that figure on your own. What happened when it answered back?"
Watch for: Use as a private world that bypasses the analysis, or flooding in fragile patients. Avoid it, or stop, if there are psychotic features. It is working when images change in response to the ego's engagement.

4.15 Drawing and painting

Purpose / when: Used with children routinely and with adults when images are easier to make than to say. Fordham's own analysis used drawing and painting, and he encouraged children to draw and paint their inner images. [source: Cambridge obituary]
Steps: (1) Keep materials available in the room for children; adults usually bring work from home. (2) Look at the work together. Ask about it rather than interpreting at once. (3) Note circles, mandalas and self-like forms (see 4.16). (4) Link to the transference where it fits.
Example language (illustrative): "Tell me about this part here, where the colour changes."
Watch for: Pictures used to please you. It is working when the images develop over time alongside the analysis.

4.16 Recognising self-representations and self-symbols

Purpose / when: When circles, mandalas, centring images or experiences of being "at the centre" appear. Fordham read toddlers' scribbled circles as pre-symbolic self-representations linked to early ego development, such as a child beginning to say "I". [source: Urban, SAP "Fordham's Model of Development"]
Steps: (1) Notice centring images, especially after periods of disorganisation. (2) Treat them as signs of reintegration, not as a goal to induce. (3) Note the context in the transference: did they follow a session where the patient felt held? (4) Name the organising quality simply.
Example language (illustrative): "After a week of feeling scattered you've drawn a circle with yourself in the middle. Something seems to be gathering together."
Watch for: Idealising self-symbols or using them to bypass ordinary relating. It is working when they coincide with more stable functioning.

4.17 Tracking deintegration–reintegration in the session and across breaks

Purpose / when: Throughout, as an observational lens. It helps you tell growth-promoting unravelling from fragmentation, and pace interventions. [source: Urban on deintegration, disintegration and splitting; clinical use [synthesis]]
Steps: (1) Notice the patient reaching out (wanting, demanding, exploring) and what happens to it in the session. (2) Notice whether the experience is taken in, for instance quieter at the end, a dream that integrates it, or recall next time. (3) If parts are being split off ("that wasn't me") or the ego is fragmenting, slow down, use fewer interpretations and more containment. (4) Watch the same rhythm across weekends and holidays.
Example language (illustrative): "You came in wanting a lot from me today, and now you seem quieter, as if something has been taken in."
Watch for: Pushing deeper while the patient is disintegrating. It is working when there are recurring cycles of disturbance followed by integration.

4.18 Working with sub-personalities and the migrating "I" (Redfearn)

Purpose / when: When the patient shifts between states that feel like different people: an omnipotent "I" and a realistic "I", child selves, critic, body-based states. Redfearn's aim is to show the migratory nature of the feeling of "I" and to open communication among the various selves. [source: Routledge description and TOC of Redfearn 1985, including chapters on omnipotent vs realistic "I", location of the feeling of "I" and sub-personalities. Specific steps are [synthesis].]
Steps: (1) Notice shifts in voice, posture or attitude that mark a different sub-self. (2) Ask where the feeling of "I" is right now, including in the body. (3) Name the sub-personality in the patient's own terms and link it to complexes or archetypal patterns. (4) Help the patient notice the others when one dominates, and look for links between them. (5) Track which sub-self is in the transference with you.
Example language (illustrative): "A moment ago the part of you that can do anything was speaking. Now there's a much smaller voice. Where do you feel yourself right now?"
Watch for: Reifying parts into a fixed cast, or turning this into a structured exercise that crowds out the transference. It is working when the patient can hold more than one self in mind at once and choose between them, what Redfearn calls winning conscious choice.

4.19 Child analysis: play technique and the child's own transference

Purpose / when: With children, including severely disturbed and autistic children. Fordham moved from treating children only through parents to analysing the child directly. He was influenced by Klein in valuing play as communication, fantasy and the child's transference. [source: Cambridge obituary; Fordham 1969/1976; detail [uncertain]]
Steps: (1) Provide a consistent room, times and play materials (toys, drawing, paint), kept for that child. [setting detail [uncertain]] (2) Let the child play, draw, tell dreams and stories, including fairy tales. (3) Observe and describe what the child is doing. (4) Interpret anxieties as they show in the play and toward you, in language the child can use. (5) Hold limits on damaging the room or yourself and interpret the meaning of the attack. (6) For autistic children, attend to rigid self-protective organisation as a defence of the self (Fordham 1976). [mechanism [uncertain]]
Example language (illustrative): "The little pig has to hide every time the door opens. I think you're worried about who's coming in, and about me, too."
Watch for: Play turning into mere activity with no communication, or the therapist entertaining. It is working when play themes develop and link to the child's life and to you.

4.20 Work with parents (child cases)

Purpose / when: Alongside child analysis. Fordham started from Jung's emphasis on parental unconscious conflicts and later analysed children directly, but still saw parents' contribution. [source: Cambridge obituary; current SAP practice detail [uncertain]]
Steps: (1) Hold regular review meetings with parents, usually by a colleague or at separate times. (2) Keep the child's session content confidential and share themes only. (3) Support the parents' understanding and their containment of the child. (4) Refer parents for their own help when their conflicts drive the child's symptoms.
Example language (illustrative): "I won't tell you what Sam says in sessions, but I can say he's working hard on feeling left out. How does that show up at home?"
Watch for: Parental rivalry with the therapist, or withdrawing the child. It is working when the parents keep the treatment going and the child's gains carry over.

4.21 Working through breaks and termination

Purpose / when: Before and after every break, and in the final phase. Fordham gives termination its own chapter. [source: Fordham 1978 TOC; Technique in Jungian Analysis "On terminating analysis"; detail [uncertain]]
Steps: (1) Announce breaks early and interpret reactions before, during (through returning material) and after. (2) For termination, agree the date months ahead. (3) Expect earlier symptoms and transference states to return, and work them through. (4) Review the patient's own self-analytic capacity. (5) Keep the ending date.
Example language (illustrative): "Now we've set the date, the old feeling that people disappear without warning has come back. This time we can look at it while it's here."
Watch for: Flights into health, premature endings, or the analyst's own reluctance to let go. It is working when the patient mourns the ending and keeps their gains.

4.22 Supervision, consultation and the analyst's own analysis

Purpose / when: In training and whenever countertransference is opaque. Fordham wrote on supervision (1961), training analysis (1968) and assessing progress in supervision (1982). [source: 1996 TOC]
Steps: (1) Bring detailed process notes. (2) Report your own reactions alongside what the patient said. (3) Look for illusory countertransference and collusion. (4) Take personal themes to your own analysis rather than to supervision.
Watch for: Supervision that becomes therapy, or hiding difficult material. It is working when you can think about the patient freshly after supervision.

4.23 Infant observation (training exercise, not an in-session intervention)

Purpose / when: In training. It sensitises the analyst to infantile states, deintegration and reintegration, and to countertransference. SAP training required candidates to observe infants and young children systematically. The method follows Esther Bick. [source: Cambridge obituary; Wikipedia on Fordham and Tavistock baby observation; Bick method detail [uncertain]
Steps: (1) Visit a family weekly for a set time (traditionally 1 hour) from birth for 1–2 years. (2) Observe without intervening or taking notes during the visit. (3) Write a detailed account afterwards, including your own feelings. (4) Discuss it in a small seminar.
Watch for: Slipping into advising the mother. The observer learns to tolerate not knowing.

Not covered as techniques: specific technique for violence in the delusional transference appears as a chapter title in Technique in Jungian Analysis (1974), its content is not drawn on, so no steps are given. [uncertain] No techniques with documented serious harm were identified in this modality.

5. Handling problems

[source: Fordham 1957/1969 via secondary summary; Fordham 1974/1978/1993 chapter titles; Redfearn 1992 via Wikipedia. Items marked [synthesis] are my own guidance consistent with the model.]

Interpretations rejected wholesale; analyst feels useless or attacked. Consider defences of the self (4.11). Interpret less, listen more, don't defend yourself, and survive. Look at your own persecutory reactions in supervision. [source: Fordham 1974 title; detail [uncertain]]
Patient analyses the analyst. Fordham's reported view: grant that the patient may have a point, but still explore their motives and defences in doing so. [source: secondary summary of Fordham] Illustrative: "You may be right that I was distracted. I'm also interested in what it does for you to be the one who sees through me."
Stuck analysis (repetitive sessions, no new material). (1) Check for illusory countertransference and counter-resistance (4.5, 4.12). (2) Re-enter not-knowing (4.3): drop the working formulation for a while. (3) Look for a shared avoidance in the transference. (4) Take it to consultation. [synthesis drawing on Fordham 1957, 1978, 1993]
Resistance (silence, lateness, intellectualising). Treat it as protection. Describe it, find the anxiety in the transference, and interpret. Silence in a frightened patient may need a simple description of how hard it is to speak, rather than a deep interpretation. [source: Fordham 1978 ch. on resistance; specifics [synthesis]]
Overwhelm, disintegration, psychotic edge. Tell deintegration (temporary, reaching out, returns) from disintegration (fragmentation, loss of ego function). For disintegration: increase containment and structure, keep interpretations few and simple and focused on the here-and-now, avoid amplification and active imagination, and consider whether frequency should go up (more holding) or the treatment setting needs psychiatric support. Redfearn's The Exploding Self (1992) describes SAP work with patients near or past psychotic breakdown and the explosive risk of change. Use standard risk assessment and crisis procedures for suicidality or acute psychosis, and liaise with psychiatry or a GP. [source: Urban; Wikipedia Redfearn; management steps [synthesis]]
Missed sessions, lateness, fee problems (non-adherence). Hold the frame. Charge per the agreement, keep the session time, and interpret the absence as communication, often about breaks, dependence or anger. If absences threaten the treatment, review frequency openly rather than letting it drift. [synthesis]
Ruptures after an interpretation or an analyst error. Acknowledge your contribution briefly, without detailed self-disclosure. Interpret the patient's experience of the hurt in the transference, and check for illusory countertransference. Fordham's asymmetry principle means you take responsibility without making the patient look after you. [source: secondary summary of Fordham's asymmetry and reserve; repair steps [synthesis]]
Analyst over-identifies or withdraws. Fordham's interactional model expects you to be drawn in. The problem is staying there, or retreating into technique or persona. Re-establish thinking through notes and supervision. [source: Fordham 1969 via secondary; Plaut's comment as titled in 1974 TOC]
Defensive use of Jungian material (archetypal talk, endless dreams, spirituality to avoid relating). Bring it back to the transference and personal history before engaging with it symbolically. Fordham warned that amplification and active imagination can be defences against transference. [source: secondary summary]
Patient wants "Jungian" spiritual work and resents reductive or infantile interpretation. Explain the frame once: in this approach the early self is part of the self, and individuation includes it. Then interpret the resentment, for example the fear of being small or dependent, as material. [synthesis]
Idealising or erotic transference. Interpret it as an infantile or archetypal longing alive in the relationship. Don't gratify it or shame it. Monitor your own response for illusion. [synthesis consistent with Fordham's transference model]
Breaks provoke crises. Announce breaks early and interpret anticipatory reactions. Give clear arrangements for emergency cover, following your service's risk procedures. Afterwards, look for what was split off during the break. [synthesis based on deintegration–reintegration]
Child cases: parents sabotage or withdraw. Increase parent-review contact (4.20), address rivalry with the therapist, and consider referring parents for their own help. [source: obituary on parents' role; steps [synthesis]]
Lower frequency than the model assumes (e.g. once weekly). The sources assume intensive analysis. At once weekly, transference develops more slowly and splitting across the long gap is likely. Use more here-and-now linking to the gap itself, interpret more conservatively, and use active imagination less. [synthesis; not addressed in sources]
Sub-personality work hardens into fixed parts (Redfearn). Return to the feeling of "I" as it moves now. Avoid naming parts as permanent characters, and link back to the transference. [synthesis]

Sources

Sources

Books and papers cited (not read in full here)

Fordham, M. (1944/1969/1994). The Life of Childhood / Children as Individuals.
Fordham, M. (1957). Notes on the transference. In New Developments in Analytical Psychology.
Fordham, M. (1969). Technique and counter-transference. J. Analytical Psychology 14: 95–118.
Fordham, M. (1974). Defences of the self. J. Analytical Psychology 19.
Fordham, M., Gordon, R., Hubback, J., & Lambert, K. (eds.) (1974). Technique in Jungian Analysis.
Fordham, M. (1976). The Self and Autism.
Fordham, M. (1978). Jungian Psychotherapy: A Study in Analytical Psychology.
Fordham, M. (1985). Explorations into the Self.
Fordham, M. (1993). On not knowing beforehand. J. Analytical Psychology 38.
Fordham, M. (1993). The Making of an Analyst.
Fordham, M. (1996). Analyst-Patient Interaction: Collected Papers on Technique (ed. S. Shamdasani).
Lambert, K. (1981). Emerging consciousness. J. Analytical Psychology.
Redfearn, J. W. T. (1985). My Self, My Many Selves.
Redfearn, J. W. T. (1992). The Exploding Self.
Astor, J. (1995). Michael Fordham: Innovations in Analytical Psychology.

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