Recollections of being in child psychoanalysis: a qualitative study of a long-term follow-up project

To date there has been very little research looking at how former child analytic patients have made sense of the experience of being in psychoanalytic treatment as children. Based on semi-structured interviews with twenty-seven people who, as children, had been in intensive psychoanalysis at the Anna Freud Centre, London, between 1952 and 1980, this study uses a qualitative methodology to explore two central themes: "attitudes toward being in therapy" and "memories of therapy and the therapist". This report presents the findings of the study in narrative form, and argues that the recollections of former child analytic patients are an important, but under-used, source of knowledge for an understanding of the psychoanalytic process.