Explore My Publications

Over the years, I have contributed significantly to the field through numerous publications. Below are key books and papers I have edited and authored.
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Books & Publications

Surviving Space

Surviving Space is a collection of papers on infant observation and related issues by contemporary experts in the field…

Waiting To Be Found

This book is about children in State care and its title – Waiting to be Found – is derived from an observation…

Towards Belonging

This book includes contributions from a wide range of interested observers and practitioners in the field of children in care…

Zac Fine and Sue Parker Hall (author of Anger, Rage, Relationship) discuss The Impact of Father Absence on Child Mental Health: Three Possible Outcomes, by Andrew Briggs in The Palgrave Handbook Of Male Psychology And Mental Health (2019). Zac and Sue made this video for their project The Other Half which explores masculinity to support therapists and their clients with non-ideological, non-judgmental perspectives that might encourage therapeutic change.
Click Here to go to The Masculinity Therapist (Zac Fine’s) Youtube channel.

Peer-Reviewed Papers

In addition to books, I have authored numerous peer-reviewed papers that span new ideas about clinical work with children and parents and address practice difficulties created by under-resourced CAMHS. Some notable papers include:

Response to an article in issue 50.2 of this journal by Nataliya Zueva: ‘Once again about the father: a father is born’

The Tavistock Century: 2020 vision edited by Margot Waddell and Sebastian Kraemer, Bicester, Phoenix Publishing, 2020, 406 pp., RPR £35.99, ISBN 978-1-912-69171-5

Translating nature: Developing Esther Bick’s method for finding words to describe what is seen and experienced in infant observation and clinical work

A little boy’s use of his male child psychotherapist to help him understanda painful conundrum?

Psychoanalytic witnessing as a prerequisite to psychotherapy with a severely sexually abused young adolescent male ex-inner city gang member

Containment lost: the challenge to child psychotherapists posed by modern CAMHS

Response piece to an article in issue 48.3 of this Journal by Judith Edwards: ‘The elusive pursuit of good enough fatherhood, and the single parent family as a modern phenomenon’

Reversing a Spiral of Deprivation: Working to Ameliorate the Relationship of Staff and Boys in a Residential Home

Adapting the Model: Therapeutic Work with Children from Army Families

Under-nourishment and clinical risk: two concerns of CAMHS clinicians

Agoraphobic and claustrophobic anxieties two problems in leaving university for some final-year students

Masculinity in the consulting room: A child psychotherapist’s experiences

The importance of clinical observation for understanding a difficult to reach young boy

Low Morale and the Loss of Clinical Identity and Leadership: An Outcome of Suppressed Turbulence in Modern CAMHS

The Impact of Father Absence on Child Mental Health: Three Possible Outcomes

Oral History Project

In collaboration with Professor Michael Roper at the University of Essex, I undertook an oral history project titled “The Birth of a Profession.” This project involved in-depth interviews with child psychotherapists who were supervisees or trainees of the founding mothers—Anna Freud and Melanie Klein—or their immediate circle (particularly Esther Bick). The interviews sought to understand how their experiences as trainees, and then as qualified practitioners, shaped and developed them into highly-skilled practitioners. These interviews are digitally accessible in the British Library.

Current Projects

I am continually engaged in research and writing. Here are some of the projects I am currently working on:

Refinding the Father in Clinical Work
An exploration of the role of the father in therapeutic settings and how it is conceptualised in psychoanalytic literature.

The Unconscious at Work: Impotence in the Face of the Climate Emergency
Investigates the psychological impact of the climate crisis and how individuals and organisations can address these challenges.