Book review: Child Abuse, Psychotherapy and the Law by Roger Kennedy, Free Association Books, London, 1997, 158 pp. ISBN 1-85343-373-X (Pbk), £15.95.
✍ Scribed by Wendy Stainton Rogers
- Book ID
- 101276031
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 86 KB
- Volume
- 7
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0952-9136
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
is a consultant psychotherapist at the Family Unit at the Cassel Hospital, an internationally renowned centre' (back cover blurb) which, he notes, is the only substantial and longestablished medical establishment with in-patient beds for whole families' (p. 31) (presumably in EnglandÐhe does not say).
Despite its wide-ranging title, the book is almost exclusively devoted to describing the work of the Unit. There is a considerable amount of detail about the Cassel's psychotherapeutic approach, including a fairly basic but useful section on assessment of parenting in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 describes the work of the Unit in general terms; Chapter 4 the `everyday life' in the Unit; and Chapter 5 is devoted to an extensive case history. Chapter 5 then examines destructive behaviour, drawing extensively on some (clearly quite old) case studies. Chapter 4 concentrates on women who abuse; Chapter 8 looks at Munchausen by proxy cases; and Chapter 9 focuses on abuse; including the issue of recovered memories.
The ®nal chapter, Chapter 10, claims to address family law issuesÐthough there is scant coverage of law other than vague exhortations about the need for lawyers to know more about psychotherapeutic approaches and to be more aware of their own unconscious motives and prejudices. Throughout, the book's highly partial and confusing treatment of the law is very disappointing. Some confusions arise from sloppy editingÐterms like place of safety order' (p. 39), access' (p. 96) and disclosure interviews' (p. 146) should have been updated when material was recycled for the book (six of the 10 chapters are re-hashes of earlier work). But in several other places the confusion arises from very muddled thinking. In Chapter 1, for example, Kennedy asserts that the legal concept of parental responsibility' as de®ned in the England & Wales Children Act 1989 and that of parental authority' are simply dierent terminology for the same thing. Kennedy then criticises what the legal term leaves out: how a parent may or may not feel they have any authority of their own, which may . . . in turn lead them to neglect their duties' (pp. 4±5). This muddling together of legal and psychodynamic concepts simply does not work. It hinders rather than helps understanding of how the law may impact upon work being undertaken with troubled families.
The main problem with the book, however, is the way Kennedy uses it, on the one hand, to eulogise about the ecacy of the work of the Unit and how much money it can save the taxpayer; and, on the other, to take swipes at social workers who are either basically antagonistic . . . to rehabilitation, or who cannot bear to examine . . . their own emotional reactions' (p. 145) and at politically correct' thinking (i.e. that of which he disapproves). This is a continual undercurrent throughout the book, with constant references to other (i.e. non-Cassel) workers who are oversceptical', prejudiced' and unsophisticated', whose attitudes are unhelpful' and who are convinced that only their methods can work. This kettle-calling diverts the book from what it was