The power of psychoanalytic conceptions in understanding nurseries

Abstract

Over the last ten years, there has been an important and developing collaboration between early years' practitioners and academics and child psychotherapists to develop a new model of training for nursery staff. This short article describes the development of that collaboration in the context of the rapid expansion of nursery places and number of hours of young children's attendance. The article highlights the rich fruitfulness of joint work in understanding nursery interactions, what may block or inhibit emotional closeness between nursery staff and children and how training for nursery staff may be adapted to take account of this.

Keywords:

• nurseries
• relationships
• social defences
• collaboration