Dual citizenship and wicked problems: a leadership stance in child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapy

ABSTRACT

This paper raises and addresses issues to do with leadership and child psychotherapy, beginning with a report on a systematic review of papers about leadership in the Journal of Child Psychotherapy (JCP). The authors establish that leadership is expressed implicitly rather than as an important issue in its own right with relevance to clinical work, service development and the ongoing viability of psychoanalytic child psychotherapy. When reviewing the limited literature available, the authors classify them into five types of article: tribute to leaders past; clinical leadership; threat to survival and call to action; organisational leadership; and exemplary papers describing professional leadership. The authors query why the leadership literature is sparse and inexplicit and respond by using the theme of ‘dual citizenship’ to explore the issue from a psychoanalytic and organisational perspective. The psychoanalytic perspective explores tensions and barriers that may be profession-specific in relation to leadership. The organisational perspective explores the wider literature on leadership, starting with the concept of ‘wicked problems and clumsy solutions’. The authors introduce and describe a ‘leadership stance’ that is compatible with psychoanalytic practice in context. This requires opening up leadership activity to the same scrutiny and reflective practice as clinical work, which provides ways of containing organisational and career anxieties and perplexing clinical problems. This paper is a call to action in regard to integrating leadership into the training and the profession.

KEYWORDS:

• Leadership
• dual citizenship
• psychoanalytic child psychotherapy
• service development
• Wicked problems
• organisational dynamics
• clinical leadership

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Brian Truckle, consultant child psychotherapist, and formerly Head of Child Psychotherapy and Family Therapy Services at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, and a key contributor to thinking and learning related to child psychotherapy practice.

2. Home | Learning from Excellence https://learningfromexcellence.com.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrew Dawson

Andrew Dawson is the professional lead for child psychotherapy in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. He trained at the Scottish Institute of Human Relations (2005) where a core part of the pre-clinical training was dedicated to Institutional Processes, involves applying observation skills and psychoanalytic thinking to organisations. In 1999 he received a millennium award for emerging leaders and he has gathered leadership training via the Common Purpose and NHS Leadership programmes. Andrew has had many leadership roles in his career including founding and leading voluntary sector organisations and community groups, and acting as a board member or trustee of registered charities, mostly in the arts, health and social care fields. Within the NHS he has led on the development of a contemporary child psychotherapy service and more recently the creation of a new Infant Mental Health service.

Lynda Ellis

Lynda Ellis trained at the Tavistock Clinic and worked for many years as a Consultant and Lead child and adolescent psychotherapist within CAMHS. After taking up a post as a Clinical Director of the Northern School of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy she became Director of that organisation and worked at a senior leadership level within the NHS Trust. She is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society and is in private practice as a psychoanalyst. She is involved in a number of developments in the Midlands and Northern Region and in teaching and writing.