ABSTRACT
In response to Mary Morgan’s paper, “How couple therapists work with parenting issues”, I am writing from the perspective and experience of my dual professional identity as a couple psychotherapist and a child and adolescent psychotherapist who works in both generic and specialised child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) in the UK National Health Service (NHS). It is perhaps salient to note that, although my training and experience as a couple psychotherapist has been used extensively in the development of couple based interventions with a range of parents, I am employed as a child and adolescent psychotherapist and, as far as I know, there are no couple psychotherapists employed in CAMHS though a number of child psychotherapists are now undergoing further training as couple psychotherapists. This is a welcome development and one that will promote a dialogue and new ways of working for two professional groups who share a psychoanalytic framework but whose focus in work with parents has traditionally been different: the couple relationship remaining central in couple psychotherapy and the parent-child relationship in child psychotherapy.
