The Secure Start® Podcast
In the same way that a secure base is the springboard for the growth of the child, knowledge of past endeavours and lessons learnt are the springboard for growth in current and future endeavours.
If we do not revisit the lessons of the past we are doomed to relearning them over and over again, with the result that we may never really achieve a greater potential.
In keeping with the idea we are encouraged to be the person we wished we knew when we were starting out, it is my vision for the podcast that it is a place where those who work in child protection and out-of-home care can access what is/was already known, spring-boarding them to even greater insights.
The Secure Start® Podcast
#19 From Winnicott's Piano to Adolescent Minds: Peter Wilson's Journey
A series of serendipities and the opportunity to play Winnicott's piano marked Peter Wilson's remarkable journey into child psychotherapy. In this captivating conversation, Peter reveals how a degree in industrial economics led unexpectedly to founding Young Minds, one of the UK's most influential children's mental health charities.
Peter's four years training at the Anna Freud Centre in London during the late 1960s represented a turning point in his life. Working directly with Anna Freud herself, he absorbed the psychoanalytic approach that would define his career spanning more than five decades. His vivid recollections of treating children five times weekly and the intensity of this training provide a window into a therapeutic world that has largely disappeared in our current era.
The most provocative thread running through our conversation is Peter's forthcoming book, "The Adolescent and the Psychotherapist: Why I Don't Know Matters." He argues passionately that embracing uncertainty—both in the therapy room and in policy development—opens space for genuine discovery. When teenagers respond with "I don't know" in therapy, Peter sees not resistance but an authentic state of uncertainty deserving respect. Similarly, he challenges the excessive certainty with which cognitive behavioral therapy is promoted as the treatment of choice despite what he considers limited evidence.
Peter offers a stinging critique of current mental health service delivery models, particularly how the IAPT program and market-based reforms have fragmented services and created competition rather than collaboration between professional disciplines. His observations about the demoralization of the workforce and the devaluing of relationship-based approaches highlight the human cost of these policy directions.
Looking back on his career, Peter wishes he had been more assertive in advocating for psychoanalytic approaches. This reflection reveals a fascinating tension between valuing the humility of "not knowing" while recognizing that sometimes forceful advocacy is needed to protect valuable approaches to understanding human distress. Join us for this profound exploration of a life dedicated to understanding the complexity of children's emotional worlds.
Peter's Bio:
Peter Wilson is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist.
He qualified in 1971, having completed his training with Anna Freud in her Centre.
Since then, he has worked in a variety of organisations, holding senior positions in all of them.
These included three Child Guidance Clinics ( now known as CAMHS), two walk- in Centres for young people, a therapeutic community ( the Peper Harow Community) and the Institute of Psychiatry.
Peter founded a national charity, called YoungMinds, the purpose of which was to raise public awareness of children’s mental health and to improve multi- discipline services.
Peter later became Clinical Adviser at ThePlace2Be, a national organisation providing counselling services in schools.
Peter has maintained a small private child and adolescent psychotherapy practice, and now teaches and provides supervision. He is publishing a book in the autumn, entitled ‘ The Adolescent and the Psychotherapist: why ‘ I don’t’ know’ matters'
Disclaimer
Information reported by guests of this podcast is assumed to be accurate as stated. Podcast owner Colby Pearce is not responsible for any error of facts presented by podcast guests. In addition, unless otherwise specified, opinions expressed by guests of this podcast may not reflect those of the podcast owner, Colby Pearce.
Welcome to the Secure Start podcast.
Peter:Life is really a bunch of serendipities. It really is. And I went where I was wanted and I spent three extraordinary years working as an unattached youth worker walking around the streets of the city that I was in, getting to know young people At that time. Psychoanalysis was kosher. Psychoanalysis was the way you thought Winnicott and I was doing a social work training at the London School of Economics, but he was just mesmerizing. So we come back to England and I then do the four-year course at the Anna Freud Center in London, which was, if you like, like the kind of turning point of my life, because it was a thorough psychoanalytic training and a Freud was still alive and it was in a kind of heyday, really, by saying I don't know. That opens up our dialogue. People don't believe in psychoanalysis by and large they don't. They believe in what's obvious, what's said on top. We're always looking underneath what's really going on, and I play piano and I played his piano, but I was good, I played Willie Goldspierre.
Colby:Welcome to the Secure Start podcast. I'm Colby Pearce, and joining me for this episode is a founder and trailblazer in children's mental health. Before I introduce my guest, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land that I'm meeting on, the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains, and acknowledge the continuing connection the living Kaurna people feel to land, waters, culture and community. I'd also like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. My guest this episode is Peter Wilson.
Colby:Peter is a consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist. He qualified in 1971, having completed his training with Anna Freud in her centre. Since then, he has worked in a variety of organisations, holding senior positions in all of them. These include three child guidance clinics, now known as CAMHS, two walk-in centres for young people, a therapeutic community, the Pepper Harrow Community, and the Institute of Psychiatry. Peter founded a national charity called Young Minds, the purpose of which was to raise public awareness of children's mental health and to improve multidiscipline services. Peter later became clinical advisor at the Place to Be, a national organisation providing counselling services in schools. Peter has maintained a small, private child and adolescent psychotherapy practice and now teaches and provides supervision. He is publishing a book in the autumn for him, spring for Me, entitled the Adolescent and the Psychotherapist, why I Don't Know Matters, welcome Peter.
Peter:Hello, thank you very much.
Colby:And I should just say at the outset that you're being a very good sport, not only being on the podcast, but continuing the podcast today, me having made the cardinal error of not sending you the questions beforehand, or at least beforehand long enough for you to consider them. Anyway, hopefully it won't be too harrowing an experience for you. And I usually just ask my guests is there anything else? Is there anything that you would like to add to that short bio that I've just read?
Peter:well, I think it covers pretty well much of my life. I think I think it covers pretty well much of my life. I think We'll have to see. Perhaps at the end I'll find there's something I want to say which I haven't said I have no idea what's going to happen. So let's see what happens.
Colby:Well, yeah, let's see Excellent. So, peter, you've had a long and very varied career in young people's mental health and also with the Pepper Harrow community, with therapeutic communities. So I guess my first question to you is how did you get into this line of work? That has been your life's work.
Peter:Oh, completely by accident, I mean pure, pure accident. I mean I knew nothing about psychoanalysis until I was about, I suppose, 20, 21. Um, and I had no aspirations in this direction at all. I mean, I really was quite ignorant. Um, and I had no aspirations in this direction at all. I mean, I really was quite ignorant.
Peter:And I went to university and I had my degree in industrial economics, you'll be pleased to know, of which I knew very little and of which I know very little now. But I did it because I had some kind of ambition to be rich and to be in industry and to be a very grown-up sort of person, as it were. In fact, my life at university was not supremely glorious academically. I spent a lot of time in the drama society. I acted in about 10 different plays, so I was goofing around and very fortunate because in my day only about 5% of the population, general population, went to university. So I was very, very privileged to be there at all. And this was in the when was I that? 1957 to 1960, so you know it's a long, long time ago. And I, the facilities were extraordinarily, uh, abundant really for me as a young person. So you know, I danced about I, I had fun, I enjoyed myself and all the rest of it and um, and met my future wife. Can you believe, such a young and delicate age that I was so there? I was a minute.
Peter:I came out of university and I applied for jobs in industry and can you believe it? I got nowhere at all. Nobody wanted me at all, and my wife suggested I apply for a job as an unattached youth worker in the youth service. I applied for that and can you believe I was unanimously accepted. So there was a complete change of direction and I went where I was wanted and I spent three extraordinary years working as an unattached youth worker, walking around the streets of the city that I was in, getting to know young people and all the rest of it, and I made use of my enjoyment and skill, I think in the theatre. So I formed a group amongst all these kids who were not. The point of the whole enterprise was why aren't more young people going to youth clubs? And, of course, more interesting young people didn't go to youth clubs or the delinquent ones, and so I formed a group where I got to know this bunch of kids by just lolling around, and then we formed a youth group and it was very successful and we, we won prizes and and I was enjoying myself carrying on being in the theater and so on.
Peter:So there I am, 21 ish, no, 24, something with my twenties and still not a clue. And then I did. Then again, I'm very much influenced by wife in those days. I mean, my wife told me, advised me to go for this job, and I never would have done otherwise. And then she went off to do a postgraduate diploma in the london school of economics and I followed suit and did a comparable course of study of diploma and applied social studies, I think it was. And there, can you believe, I encountered Winnicott. Winnicott was one of the teachers and a lovely man called oh goodness name, name's gone now. Anyway, there were psychoanalytic, esteemed people on this course which complete will absolute news to me, finish that.
Peter:And then we have two next, and the true story it's not probably the formal story is that I needed to find Holly Golighty. In other words, I needed to find Audrey Hepburn, who was in Breakfast in Tiflis with all those yellow cabs and all that beautiful. And I had a thing Having been brought up on American movies, I had to go to America to find Holly Golightly. She was a total fantasy. My wife has a different story, but that's my story.
Peter:And so we went to New York and my brother-in-law happened to live in New York for one reason or another, so we stayed with him and then I just looked up the Yellow Pages, basically to find jobs. Looked up the Yellow Pages and looked at all of these various jobs and the usual sort of hustle and this and the other, but managed to get a job with the jewish board of guardians, which is a big, major kind of social service facility in new york, you know, and they ran a residential treatment center, yeah, upstate New York, for crazy kids, and they just had a strike and so they'd lost quite a few of their staff. And so there I was, merrily coming along and they took me on. They took me on, so it was pure pure luck, and that was an amazing job because it was working with very disturbed kids. They had about 200 of these kids on a big campus in different cottages up there in in upstate new york. And it was at that time. Psychoanalysis was kosher.
Peter:Psychoanalysis was the way you thought this was before its demise. This, this would be what in the 1963 to 64, I think something like that. And so they were great people and I and they had training in their central office in Manhattan and I learned psychoanalysis. I was introduced to this whole new thing. Here I am, whatever I am, in the middle of my twenties, discovering psychoanalysis. I was introduced to this whole new thing. Here I am, whatever I am, in the middle of my 20s, discovering psychoanalysis really.
Peter:And then there was a man there, a man called Fred Evans. He was a psychiatrist and he said why don't you apply to Anna Freud for her training? And I said well, that sounds a good idea. Turns out Anna Freud's training was in London, not in New York, and I got interviewed. And I got interviewed by two eminent child psychotherapists, augusta Alpert and Mariana Chris, in New York. I was interviewed in New York and they thought I was married at my time and our first child was there. We went back to London. My wife wanted to get back to England because of the culture. The American culture was very different. So we came back with one child and I got married when I was 21. He, he, long, long time time. I'm 21. Can you believe that? I didn't know what on earth I was doing, but she was beautiful, so there we go I wasn't much older, peter there we go and I'm still married to the same woman.
Peter:can you believe that? Yeah, 64 years 64 years Congratulations.
Peter:Yeah, married in 1960. And went on to university. So we come back to England and I then do the four-year course at the Anna Freud Center in London, which was, if you like, the kind of turning point of my life, because it was a thorough psychoanalytic training. Anna Freud was still alive and it was in a kind of heyday really, and there were about eight of us who were in that year and I've most of them were American. So then then, so here I am now a psycho and I'm a child and adolescent psychoanalyst, and I qualified in 1971, as you put, and then I waded off into the world. So that's how I came to be what I am. Actually. I mean, it's a total hit and miss story, but they're the best stories really.
Peter:I mean, some people the age of five say I'm going to be an accountant or I'm going to be a lawyer I had no idea what I was going to be, but that's what I became and have became and have become ever since yes, yes over 50 years in this business.
Colby:Wow, that's there you go yeah that's an extraordinary story and in fact, uh fact, peter, not uncommon amongst my guests on this podcast. So they will say something very similar about accidents, getting into it by accidents and economics as well, extraordinary. I think there's been at least a couple of people who've talked about who've come in from a more an economics background into this space. One of my guests was a fellow by the name of Graham Kerridge and he was interested in he'd also studied economics, was interested in human capital and got a job at the Cotswold community. Yeah, and he's an Australian. He has moved backwards and forwards. In fact he's eventually ended up in health management and has worked all across the world in that area. But, yeah, up in health management and has worked all across the world in that area. But, but, yeah, but economics. I'm trying to think if john whitwell, who also was from the cotwell cotswold community, might have mentioned economics yeah, yeah yeah, so there you go.
Colby:It's all these maths. People get into psychotherapy yeah, it's extraordinary.
Peter:Yeah good, never have been any good at economics, but there we go.
Colby:Yeah, and Richard Rowlandson from the Mulberry Bush. He also talked about, well, his father. He talked about maths. We had some interesting little backwards and forwards about maths on his conversation. But anyway, you're in the group of. You are good company in both having something of a maths background and also describing how you got into the work as if by accident.
Peter:Yeah, I would add that I was a child, adolescent, in the 50s, the 1950s, and actually people have all kinds of views about that period. But in fact in England following the war there were major changes and the establishment of an education system and health service and so on was phenomenal age and I benefited wildly from it. I mean I happened to do well at school. My own, my background is pretty modest. My father was a tailor and I was pretty modest, you know, but I did well, for some reason or other, with my A levels and then got, but only five percent of us got into university. I mean, if we I was just lucky, frankly, the politics of the time, if I were to set out now I'd probably get lost very, very early. But in those days, I mean, I did prosper very much from a very ordinary background. I mean there was nothing privileged about my life at all. I feel very grateful for all of that and I sometimes think, oh my God, you know I mean everybody's so critical of the past, but that was a good period.
Peter:A lovely man called a politician, called can't remember his name Anyway, he wrote a book called the Age of Hope, the Age of Hope. Anyway, he wrote a book called the Age of Hope, the Age of Hope, and I don't think we could say the age that we're living in is of hope at all.
Colby:Yeah, quite the opposite, quite the opposite. Unfortunately, you've mentioned a couple of names too. So Donald Winnicott is, you know, obviously still quite influential in our thinking, in child protection circles, and you met him. He was a teacher while you were doing your second part of your education. And, of course, anna Freud is a giant of the psychotherapy world.
Peter:Winnicott and I was doing a social work training at the London School of Economics but he was just mesmerizing. I mean I was totally ignorant and this man comes on and doesn't talk in a particularly eloquent way, but he drew a diagram of two circles and called one a bad breast and another one a good breast and he talked about these circles on the board and I really didn't know what he was on about. But also the little bit I like to say that he and his wife Claire invited our students to his home in the Rottlosh part part of London and I played piano and I played his piano. I thought I was good. I played Willy Holtz's piano.
Peter:I wasn't very good in those days but he thought he was very nice about it anyway. So you know I didn't quite know him and I well he's been such a presence in my life in all kinds of ways and you know he writes so well, although at times you haven't got a clue what he's on about, but at times I was right very well, and those phrases like the good enough mother and the transitional space and um, psychotherapy is two people playing with each other, I mean all those kind of ideas just resonate. It was a remarkable man, frankly, and we lack anybody of that significance these days, I'm afraid yeah, his ideas have definitely stood the test of time.
Colby:I just thought of a title for your next book, peter.
Peter:Yes.
Colby:Winnicott's Piano.
Peter:Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn't it? Yeah?
Colby:I had these moments of inspiration, and then, yeah, and then you spent four years at Anna Freud Centre and she was still alive at that time.
Peter:Tell us a little bit about that experience okay, well, I need to say that I was green, young and very beautiful in those days and she was where. She was not a pompous woman, she was not a Melanie Klein. Frankly, she was very different from a client, rather modest woman, but I looked upon her with in awe really and uh, uh and well, I, I, just I. It was such a thorough training in psychoanalysis. I mean, we, we were required to read Freud and it was a theory, the theory group, and it was all looking at Freud in some detail and which I still benefit from, actually the stuff I learned when you're reading forward. We all, we all took concepts. I took the concept of resistance, I took the concepts of identification and you read Freud all through on those concepts. That was terrific.
Peter:Anna Freud's meta psychological profile, meaning a profile of a diagnostic profile which looks at all the various aspects of a child's personality. That was part of the breathing. It was called the diagnostic group and we would do, I mean, looking at the complexity of a child's growth. That was what she was on about and she's written it in the book called Normality and Pathology in Childhood and it's there if you want to find out about it. And then I actually became a consultant, which is a rather absurd term, but I was called the consultant of the nursery school because in the center there was a nursery school as part of the center and it was financed for socioeconomically deprived backgrounds. So there was a nursery school and Anna Freud loved the nursery school. She just loved children. She just was a very modest person really and I was somehow the consultant and I used to go down there and be part of the scene.
Peter:Every Thursday afternoon two o'clock there was a beer meeting to discuss the children and that was very, that was very, just, very, because we all knew the children and they were. Some were very problematic and some who were very flourishing at such a young age, and Americans who had come to these meetings and the americans love to come and sit at the feet of anna freud and there's some funny stories about that, but I won't go into those anyway. So so, and then we had three cases. Five times a week I saw, uh, an adolescent and a latency child, the under five. I didn't really hit it off with and I don't think the child or the mother understood what on earth I was doing. That didn't work out very well. I'm not very good at that, but the other two children and we would write weekly reports of what had happened and that would be reviewed and discussed and so on.
Peter:So it was a phenomenal training. It was not the most perfect training. It was not, you know, I could. There were. There were things that didn't not happen, but by and large it was a psychoanalytic training and it was my turning point. Really it just sort of shaped me. I was now a child and adolescent psychotherapist for the an analyst, but psychotherapy and that's what I was, and.
Peter:I sailed off into the world being one and have been one. Can you believe all my life? Yeah, yeah, yeah it's very.
Colby:It's definitely a vocation, I think, being one myself. Yeah, if I heard you correctly, you said five times a week you were seeing the young people yeah yeah, five times yeah, that would make you over what sort of period, peter like, how long would you see them at that frequency?
Peter:Three years two to three years.
Colby:Yeah, and how were endings managed when you've had such a significant amount of involvement in a young person's life?
Peter:Yeah, that's a naughty question because I don't think endings are ever properly discussed really. I mean there is what you're supposed to do is to acknowledge what has been done, acknowledge achievements and knowledge limits have happened, and understand the hurt and the anger of something important being terminated. I mean you ought to all do all of that. Truth is probably didn't do it as well as I should have done really. I mean I was being, I mean all these cases of being supervised and they were very. There was an extraordinary woman called bianca gordon who wasn't terribly popular but she was a very um particular, looked at detail, was very thorough, and so I did do reasonably well, I think, with the child, the adolescent. I was supervised by a lovely bloke called max goldblatt and I don't think that was probably handled as strongly as it should have been really. I think I mean, given that I mean I'm not sure, really well, I don't think. I just know, actually you can't expect children these days to come five times a week.
Peter:It's just not part of the rush of our society. I think the Anna Freud was still deep in its own history really. It certainly couldn't be applied now. The psychoanalytic trainings that exist now have three times a week, but very rarely anything more than that.
Peter:I think the Institute of Psychoanalysis sees adults maybe four times a week, but anyway but and I think actually, I think, looking back, I think maybe maybe I could have made more of that, we could have made more of that. Maybe it was almost too much, maybe there wasn't enough analytic scrutiny of what was going on. You get into a kind of lull, you know if it's every time all the time. So I look back with some kind of reservations about it and I mean I know that Peter Fonagy and his I forgot her name, I forgot it anyway he and his co-worker looked in detail at the work that we had done, all the cases, all the weekly reports, and I think he could see that there were limitations.
Peter:I think we did well with the neurotic children, but with the more borderline and the more delinquent I'm not sure we did as well as we might and I think it left Carnegie with a certain sort of questioning about that kind of training, that kind of and of course he has gone ahead now and and spearheaded uh, training which is virtually non-athletic, as I can see anyway, we won't go into that. But um yeah, but for me it was an extraordinary experience, it really was apologies for the question.
Colby:I. I think endings. Endings come into my work quite a lot as well and, um, you can probably tell from oh no, it's that way from the book title just next to my shoulder. I mean, I'm very interested in bolby's attachment theory and work very much in consideration of that.
Colby:I don't see children more than once a week but I have seen some children weekly, probably more ordinarily fortnightly, working in a context with young people who come from relational trauma backgrounds and relational disadvantage, and working with them for a long time and I think we become significant parts of their life growing up. And so the question of endings, and therapeutic endings is is quite a vexed one well.
Peter:Do you know of any relationship that ends well?
Colby:that's a. That's actually a very, yeah, a very important point, I think I often think that. So, for example, I observe couples. I don't work with couples who divorce, but I've observed people in my circle who have divorced and observed that they considered that their life would be better away from their partner. Their life would be better away from their, their partner, who and even in circumstances where they they were, they disliked their, their spouse quite a lot. I've observed their life. They go through it, definitely go through a period of struggle, and things do go downhill after that because, even if you don't like someone, there's still been a significant part of your life, a significant connection. So, yeah, I think you're right ending well, isn't it really?
Peter:yeah good ending people talk about and I wonder where it is yeah, maybe that's a another book I don't mind writing books either.
Colby:Actually, I haven't written one for a while. I I've been thinking of.
Peter:How many have you written? I mean, that's really quite something.
Colby:I've only written these two, but the attachment book. I refer to that as two books because it's two editions and when I came to update the first edition I liked it so little that I attempted to rewrite it completely and it is very different from the first edition. But my publisher asked me to put respectfully put stuff back in from the first book. So, yeah, so that's what happened, and I haven't written anything now for a decade. I should write something again. I've got lots of ideas and little time.
Peter:yeah it's not easy writing it's not easy is it.
Peter:Well, I don't find it easy at all. The only consolation is that people think that I'm easy to read, that I'm you know and that that pleases me. But trying to get it to be like I mean I can only write stuff that I'm you know and that pleases me. But trying to get it to be like I mean I can only write stuff that I understand myself, you know. A lot of stuff I read I don't understand. I don't know what they're talking about. I'm not sure they know what they're talking about.
Colby:I went through a Nietzsche stage reading Nietzsche's books.
Colby:You did I did and you know, and I took a nugget out of, oh, I took a few nuggets out of them, each of them, and and yeah, when you're reading Nietzsche from my well, when I was reading Nietzsche, I I think, yeah, I probably understood about five percent, particularly as it went on, I think, the last of his books that he well, very close to the end he wrote, thus spake zarathustra, and I loved that book, but he was actually quite unwell when he wrote that book and uh, yeah, so it was quite, it's quite a challenging book, but so is dostoevsky as well, and notes from the underground. You know, very short book, only about 70 or so pages, but, goodness gracious, is that hard to read. Yeah, what was that?
Peter:what was that?
Colby:it's just the field or dossier's book. Uh, notes from the underground, yeah, yeah, I similarly have a reputation for being easy to read and, um, I just say to people well, I'm just a simple man with a simple message. I don't like over and, like you, if I don't understand it, I won't write it.
Peter:No, exactly, exactly Same as me, absolutely.
Colby:Yeah.
Peter:I mean, I've read quite a lot of Freud and he's not at all easy to read sometimes he isn't yeah. So yeah, I tried to read.
Colby:Interpreting Dreams a few years ago, did you really? And I gave up. Much to my chagrin, I confess, I gave up. I'll have another go, another time.
Peter:It's 600 pages. That's an awful lot.
Colby:Peter, yeah, like I said there's this earlier, there's loads I could speak to you about. I you founded the, the um you founded young minds in in the uk there, um, I I knew about young minds, I think because I I had come across it at a time when there had been some reviews of probably the first edition of my attachment book that was associated in some ways with the young minds, with young minds activities. But tell us a little bit about young minds and how you came to found found it and what. What was its work?
Peter:well, it happened in the middle of my life. I think I was in my very early 50s when I got involved with it. Well, you know, it was quite a leading light, and what can I say about it? I mean, I had been practising in the health service and very aware of, uh, poor resources and and people didn't really understand what it was all about. And um, and there was a. There was a. It was called the interclinic conferences. Um, in england at that time, where are we now? We're in my 40s. I can't remember where I'd be now.
Peter:There was a lot of concern about child guidance clinics and them being properly managed and who was managing them. Was it the psychiatrists? Who were the managers, or was it other people? But the bottom line was that there was really very inadequate resources and very limited knowledge of what they did, and so a group of us thought you know, something needs to be done, we need to make more of an effort. And at that time I belonged to a funny little group called the Child Guidance Trust and it was spearheaded by a lovely lady called Robina Addis, who was a rather posh lady, who, in the 20s, with her friends I think they were called the Mayflower ladies, and they went over to America and Adler Alfred Adler, who was one of Freud's early departures had set up child guidance clinics over there and they learned that and they brought it back and so they started the child guidance movement in the 20s and 30s. Then the war came, but then in the 50s and the 60s they really blossomed and I think there was something like 300 or so child guidance clinics in the country and so and that was the body that was coming, that kept coming together and saying we need to have more influence than we do.
Peter:So a long, long, long story. A couple of us did it. We started to approach the department of health and, um, and then it's, it's just, and then it's just. Life is really a bunch of serendipities, it really is, for some extraordinary reason.
Peter:I got to know the man in the Department of Health whose responsibility was to oversee expenditure or something like that, and he turned out to be an interesting man. Um, who, who, who, was in analysis himself I mean, can you believe, civil servant in analysis and he, he lived in the suburbs and he came into every time he came to London. He was looking at all these young people and an awful lot of them looked pretty hopeless and miserable and disheveled and unhappy and he said what is the department doing about these people? There are a lot of people looking after people with dyslexia, but what about these people, these emotionally? So he became well, he and I got on for some extraordinary reason, and the extraordinary, extraordinary reason was he liked horse racing, as indeed I did at that time it wasn't the economics connection that was pretty bad economics.
Peter:I can do that, but anyway, he he was. So we got on very well and, uh, he managed to be. It's a long, long story, but he managed to. At that time I was running the Brandon Center, which was a walk-in center for adolescents and so on, and he managed to find some money that was not being properly spent and gave us a grant which was like magic. It was like pure magic, and so we got on with that.
Peter:And then he was in the Department of Health and he was used to going to very impressive people. So he wanted to get in touch with a man called Louis Blom Cooper who was a barrister of high repute and sat on various child abuse inquiries. He was a rather dignified man and he got in touch. He tried to get in touch with Louis Blanc-Cooper, but Louis Blanc-Cooper was in the bath. But his wife answered the phone and I happen to know his wife rather well and she said you don't want to talk to Louis, you want to talk to Peter Wilson.
Peter:And that's how this chap and I got on with each other and that was that pure piece of utter serendipity. It's just ridiculous. And then on the back he said well, it's all very well, you're running this center in the middle of London, but what about all these young people? What are we going to do with that? So with his support his support he managed to get some money together to actually fund the beginning of Young Minds Enough money to pay for my salary, an information officer and a PA for me £150000 pounds or something. And because of that that's how Young Minds happened and I became the director and it was a really important course. Two things raise awareness of children's mental health and improve multidisciplinary services for them throughout the lab. They were the two main things, because at that time if you talked about children's mental health, people thought what are you saying? They're all crazy, they're all schizophrenic. What the hell are you talking about? So we had to define what we meant by mental health and then so I built the organization up and I was there for I don't know, 10 or 11 years or something like that in my 50s and we built it up and we had a budget of about 2 million, I think by the end of
Peter:it and we we organized a consultancy service that went across different parts of the country and looked at the way different departments are organizing comprehensive services. Children's mental health was not just the business of psychiatry or psychotherapists. It was the business of everybody in the voluntary sector and there were some very good reports. It was a good period. This was in the 90s, in the early part of this century, so that's how that happened and it was going very well indeed. But then there was this whatever it was a bank crisis or something. Suddenly everything was in crisis because of all these dodgy loans in America or whatever. It was a bank crisis or something. Suddenly everything was in crisis because of all these dodgy loans in america, or whatever it was. Yeah, and everything tightened up. Everything tightened up and, as a result of that, things have not gone very well since. I can talk about that later on.
Peter:But that's what young minds was and it was very alive and I had about 30 staff and it was. It was terrific, actually it was very, but it took a hell of a lot out of me, I must say. You know, I worked long hours. I worried about money all the time. Get to christmas and the financial year is march and you can see an almost deficit where you're going to get the money from. I mean, it was, and I went all over the country talking and this and the other.
Peter:I did work terribly hard, um, and it was, it was good and actually, and we ran a parent information service and people, parents, ringing up about their kids, and that was very well in. It was. It was going very well. I was very with it. But then I got to 65, 65 or coming up to it, and I really I thought I'd done enough and I was pretty exhausted, pretty exhausted, and I was ready to retire, you know, carpet slippers in front of the fire, dozing off forever and ever. But then an extraordinary woman called Benita Refsson, who ran an organization called the Place to Be that puts counselling into schools nationally, came and said would I be a clinical advisor to her organization? And I couldn't resist it really, and so I did that for several years afterwards. But everything is all by chance really. It really is one chance. Yeah, I feel very proud of it. I'm rather sad that I think all of his efforts have pretty well come to nothing as a result of recent political events in this country.
Colby:But we'll come to that later on, if so be yeah, and you were a consultant, I think, at pepper harrow too, or you were you're involved in paper harrow.
Peter:Yes, there was one frenetic period in my life and I'm not entirely sure I'm proud of it. I was working in six different places during the course of every week omnipotence madness, but that's. I was working in six different places during the course of every week, omnipotence madness. That's what I was doing. And Pepper Harrow was another extraordinary thing. It's a therapeutic community in a big house in the country with, about when I first it was 50 kids first of all, now it's 30 kids and a staff of about 30 or something of that kind, and that was an amazing experience. I mean, really, really disturbed crazy kids, very delinquent, some borderline and uh, and it was a therapeutic community. So you know, every morning there would be a community meeting, everybody, all the staff, all the kids, come together in informed community and and so the staff operated both as teachers and as as therapists.
Peter:It was a whole kind of integrated idea yeah and it was amazing place and the man who ran it had a certain kind of extraordinary charisma as a little guy but very, very determined and and he led it with a kind of passion very strong.
Peter:And the dining room was was designed so that all the tables were breast like in shape and the children had a delicious, every lovely field that they wanted. I mean it was an amazing place. It closed because and I was the consultant my basic job was being a consultant to the staff to help deal with the pressure at all, but of course I was in the community and I was known and so on.
Peter:So that was incredible and I was known and so on. So that was uh incredible that was Pepa Haro. Yeah, that was Pepa Haro. It was amazing and I'm not sure I was. I mean we're trying to. I mean I loved them.
Peter:I always remember he was determined to try and understand the, the psychopathology of these kids and what was in them and he had, and I think he hoped that I really would be able to get there and tell him, and I don't think I did. I think I was reasonably useful to staff, but to understand the extremity of their misery and their acting out was was just wild. But it was a wonderful place and it couldn't exist. It couldn't exist now because you know, for example, for example, if a kid ran away, staff would run after them and bring them back. Can you imagine? And physically bring them back, physically touching them, safeguarding, and what do you mean? Kids have a right to their right to go off.
Peter:We had a scandal in this country where men have been exploiting young girls who've been run away from their children's homes, sexually exploiting them. These kids have been allowed to run out and nobody's come and found them. They do that because you know to find them, them to bring them back physically, is safeguarding, and so it was a great place and it had passion and commitment and care.
Peter:it wasn't just a child minding place, it was a therapeutic place and some of the kids did remarkably well and some of the kids did remarkably hopeless. I mean, it got nowhere, yeah. So there we go. So I've been incredibly lucky, frankly, in having that experience, and that's simply because I happen to know the founder of the place, a play called Melvin Mose, and for some reason he thought I was very good, so I took the job and it was well paid, so I did it.
Colby:So I took the job and it was well paid, so I did it. Peter, I want to pick up on something that you said there as a bit of a segue into your soon-to-be-released book, because you were saying how the chap that was running the place really hoped you could answer the questions that he had about what was going on for the young people, and you've got this book coming out with a rather intriguing title to it the Adolescent and the Psychotherapist. Why, I Don't Know Matters, and I wondered if there was just anything that you could, you felt able to share with us about the book and maybe even a little bit about that title yeah, well, it's going to be published, apparently in December or over the next year.
Peter:It's going to be published being through all the business contract, more than I say. And well, I wanted to call it, I wanted to call it, I don't know. That's what, that's all I wanted to be, I don't know. But their editors routledge, um, they said I'm not already happy about that, would they put the book what? What section of the bookshop or the library? And I can see their point of view. Um, but I had a thing about, I don't know anyway, one.
Peter:I went, we went barmy, trying to think of a title. The adolescent, the psychotherapist is not a bad title, but in the end I kept it in. Why, I don't know matters. And the book basically is a collection of papers that I've written in the past. I've written about 40 or 50 papers or chapters that have been here and there and I've got 10 in there and I think that they're quite pleased with what they're giving off, I think, and I think it meets the title of the therapist and the adolescent.
Peter:But I don't know how I had a thing about, and there's two main reasons. The first is clinical. You tell me anybody who sat down done psychotherapy with adolescents and they are confronted with I don't know, I don't know. What do you feel, what do you feel? What do you feel? I don't know, I don't know. And I think as therapists we've become rather cross. I'm here to know and you're saying you don't know. That's resistance, resistance, whereas in fact it's much more than that. It's much more uncertainty about what they feel.
Peter:Anyway, they're not sure whether they should say or not say are they being disloyal to their parents? To talk about this? I mean, there are all kinds of reasons. Be it, I don't know. And so I think it matters that we respect I don't know. Also, the other thing is political. There's far too much certainty that having an influence on policy and it's my crack and the scientists.
Peter:Now, I'm not anti-science or all the rest, wonderful things, but the science of psychotherapy not so good, not so good, not so conclusive as they make it out to be, so that they think cbt is the treatment of choice. This is what evidence suggests. The evidence is not good. It's not good, it's a lie. They're lying about it, in my view, and so they are not saying I don't know If they said I don't know, but so far this looks as if CBT can be helpful with certain patients, for a certain type of plan maybe, but they don't it's either. They know, and they've set up a whole kind of service delivery now which is based on we know, and we will do it this way.
Peter:So do it this way, so I, I don't know matters, and I. A great virtue If I, if you and I. I mean the paradox is I'm telling you what I think I know, but you know if, if we leave it and I say I know everything, then you haven't got a question to answer because I've known it all by saying I don't know. That opens up our dialogue for for something, and so I think there's a, there is a, there is a virtue, virtue not knowing. And through not knowing we discover. If you say no, you're not opening your mind. That's right. So that's what that book's all about.
Colby:I was hoping that you would say something along those lines. I remember John Whitwell talking about using I don't know as a way of opening up reflective thinking about things, and I was also thinking with teenagers that I don't know. Is there a way sometimes of setting some boundaries around themselves? And if that is possibly what they're doing, then that's something we should respect rather than get frustrated with yeah, yeah, no, that's wonderful.
Peter:Talking about Australia, I did a series of seminars organised by Peter Blake, who you presumably know no, I don't, you don't, no, really. Organised by Peter Blake, who you presumably know no, I don't, you don't, no, really. He's in Sydney and he's written an enormous book on child psychotherapy, peter Blake. Anyway, at these seminars, people will present me with these impossible cases and I will say I don't know and I'm worried that actually that wasn't the right approach. People want you to have omnipotent answers and I just don't see it.
Peter:I think we have to live with the uncertainty in order to find out a bit more.
Colby:So there we are is there any advice that you would give your younger self as a, as a early career psychotherapist, um, from from the position that you're, you're in now, or that you would give, indeed, to other, uh, early career um psychotherapists? Child and adolescent psychotherapists?
Peter:very. It's a very, very good question and therefore a very difficult question. Yes, I have been thinking about that. I'm going to give an answer, thinking about myself and maybe particularly psychotherapies. The advice I would give young Peter Wilson is to do something to enable him to be more assertive and confident in what he, uh was doing, and you could say my analysis should have done that, but it didn't. I mean to speak with more authority, to to be more, um, to be less inclined to let things pass, to basically recognize the wrongness of what other people are talking about and to express my disagreement.
Peter:I think, I'm not putting this very well, but I wish I'd had more authority to some deeper sense of authority within myself that I think I have now, which I've gleaned from my my life's experience. But as a young person I don't think, and I think it's something about psychoanalytic training, um, that it makes you reflective and thoughtful and all the rest of it, but doesn't really engineer you to to speak up. I had a farcical experience a long, long time ago, uh, with a man called wallace hamilton and we were involved in um trying to establish a salary structure in the national health service for child psychotherapists, which in fact, we did an amazing piece of work. But as part of that, we were involved with a trade union I forget what it was called now the trade union and they organized some training sessions in how to negotiate.
Peter:And we had an ex coal miner I think it was a unionist coma and he was a rough truss sort of bloke and we were videoed in in negotiating relationships. We were pathetic we were. We were leaning back, saying, oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, and just leaning further back, almost a disappearance, whereas we should have been much more assertive, confrontational, authoritative and so on, and I really I would. And I say I mean I don't have too much to do now with young child psychotherapy, but I encounter them every day and they're very nice young men but they've got no balls, if I can put it that way. They need a bit of punch and they're also understanding.
Peter:It's that balance between understanding and assertion. And so and I think we do ourselves it's that balance between understanding and assertion and I think we do ourselves a great disservice as a child psychotherapy profession. The psychiatrists have sort of bred with it. They are the people who know about mental health, they know about mental illness and the psychologists are very, very pushy and very uptight and so on, but the psychotherapists, I think, are a pushover. Frankly, I wish I'd had greater authority as a young man, even at Young Minds, when I was pushing for child mental health. I found my psychoanalytic background. Psychoanalytic understanding was too understanding. People don't believe in psychoanalysis background.
Peter:Psychoanalytic understanding was to understanding people don't believe in psychoanalysis by and large they don't. They believe in what's obvious, what's said on top. We all looking underneath what's what's what's really going on, but they don't get there. You need to operate at that kind of level, yeah it is, I is hard it's the worst of my life. I think I wished I would like that would be something. I mean it's a good answer, I think, to a good question really, because it's an honest one, and I do feel I rue that I didn't have more of that in my life.
Colby:But there's also a wisdom in humility in a sense. I know that sounds a wisdom in humility. I know humility. I know that sounds a bit corny, but it's as we were talking about in relation to, I don't know, maintaining a stance of curiosity, yeah. Yeah, not jumping in with the answer straight away. Yeah, maintaining an open space of inquiry, which I think is very much. I don't describe myself as a psychoanalyst in the same way that you do, but I think that's really a cornerstone of psychoanalytic work is that it creates space for inquiry and exploration.
Peter:Some people just assume that they are to be heard and I don't think I've had that assumption. I mean not that I've been effective. I mean you've highlighted a conundrum. Frankly, you know that I do believe in not knowing and humility and so on. At the same time, I wish I had been something other than what I've been. Not that I've been lacking in any assertion, but I could have made more of a difference. I could have made more of a noise.
Peter:People make an awful lot of noise and people sort of keel over under the weight of the noise.
Colby:There's a proverb, isn't it the rusty? What is it? The rusty gate gets the oil, or something like that. Though, what would you say, peter, if you were sitting in front of the health secretary, and what would you say to them now about child and adolescent mental health and what needs to happen?
Peter:Well, it's a bit in my head at the moment because there's a very good article in the latest edition of the Journal of child psychotherapy and this chap's written what the state of affairs is in the for a child psychotherapist and basically what he's actually saying is that two major developments have occurred in the running of mental health services in this country. The one was a the introduction of something called IAPT introduce introduce improving access to psychological therapies.
Colby:Yeah.
Peter:And the other one was the children health and social care act of 2012. And he highlights these two things and the two strains which are so important. In the first, in IAPT, it's all about improving access and apparently improving treatment. Uh, improving access and apparently improving treatment, but it bases the, the, the therapy, on what is called nice, the national institute of clinical excellence. Look at very thoroughly at the end and the evidence from that suggests probably more powerfully, points to cognitive behavioral therapy and that that is the therapy that should be offered for all in all in all, child and adolescent mental health services should be CBT, which is the predominant offer, and that is reinforced by this power of evidence that it works. They're interested in outcomes. And there's a whole history about IAPT. It was basically introduced by the Minister of Economics, funnily enough.
Colby:Again.
Peter:Again, he was very concerned that so many men were not going to work because they were depressed. So let's bring in a treatment which apparently works with depression. Get these poor buggers to work. That was the raison d'etre. And it happened to be he had a close relationship with a cbt specialist in the mausoleum hospital and so cbt was presented and now it put it pervades everything.
Peter:So as a child psychotherapist working in a health service, by and large in the camps, you won't be if you won't see a referral out there. As it comes in cbt, be offered it Maybe three or four attempts before it's given to a child psychotherapist, and that's absolutely wrong. And the thing about all this evidence is that it doesn't really take into account the complexity of people's problems and it's just it purports to deal with mild to moderate problems. Anybody can do that. Really, you know, to deal with the kind of real problems that we have in in our society you need much more. So IAPT has entered into the realm. The the other thing is this Health and Social Care Act, which actually is coming from a political view that people, we should be in businesses, we should be in competition with each other, we should be efficient, do outcomes and we should compete with each other.
Peter:We should, and I'm putting that broad as a broad political view, um, but now being applied to that simply means everything is division, everything's divided. Yeah, people are fragmented. I have a kid. I'm working with a kid and somebody says, well, this kid's got a neurodevelopmental problem or something. So therefore the kids should go to that service, not be part of the service I'm doing and anyway.
Peter:So it's a long, long story and I'm full of it at the moment because it really pretty well renders irrelevant to all the work I do at Young Marts. I mean, they, they they're very impressed that everybody has more awareness of child mental health, possibly, but I'm not sure that people understand what mental health is. And, um, as far as my whole attempt to bring together the disciplines to provide a comprehensive service, that every discipline is in competition with each other, yeah, being more competitive, and it just is. And we hear people demoralized and their skills devalued. And so what would I say to the health secretary? Abolish the lot. Yes, a weakness is, cbt is attractive because it's quick, short term and ding, ding, ding, whereas our psychotherapy is longer, it has to take longer, it has to. And the overwhelming thing is the resources for CAMHS for children's mental health has been reduced. I mean, posts are not being re-advertised. It's just an appalling situation.
Peter:Now I feel for the Secretary, the Health Secretary, a man called Wes, something or other, montgomery. I feel for him because the National Health Service is really in a terribly difficult state and I don't think child mental health is going to be high up on its priorities. And what would I propose instead? Because it is a factor that there's an enormous need, an enormous demand, and what can people do effectively to deal with it? I understand all that, but the bottom line is people are getting disillusioned. All the CBT doesn't work for most of these people and everybody becomes disillusioned and I think it does a major disservice in the long run. But what I would advise I'm moaning more than what I would advise but I would advise not to be so reliant on these two policies, to think about other ways of meeting a need. It's a very, really serious problem really, and families anyway.
Colby:So I was just going to say you know as much. If it's worth anything, what 30 years of delivering psychotherapy to children and young people has taught me is that they don't like CBT.
Peter:No, they don't.
Colby:They much prefer relational, play-oriented psychotherapy.
Peter:Yeah, absolutely, they much prefer it, yeah.
Colby:And I remember when I was training. I remember there was and that's over 30 years ago now, but I remember a relatively recently retired clinical psychologist here in my home state. I remember her addressing our class and saying that all the CBT practitioners in our professions you know there's all these people that advocate for CBT and say that CBT is the answer, but when they themselves need a therapeutic service, they find someone who is much more person-centred. Analytical Absolutely yeah, I've never forgotten that. Analytical, yeah, absolutely yeah, I've never forgotten that. Anyway, yeah absolutely.
Colby:Peter, yeah, we've had a wonderful chat and there's so much more. I've really enjoyed it and there's so much more I can speak to you about. I wondered if there was any question that you'd like to ask me before we wrap up. I've asked you a lot of questions.
Peter:Yeah, you got me there. On the last one. What would you like me to ask? I think maybe. What do I mean by psychoanalysis, Because I always go on about it and I, yeah, yeah, I think that's what am I talking about. I think I'm a psychoanalyst you're asking me well, it's a question you should ask me, but you can ask yourself.
Peter:It's a question you could ask me and I would have liked that would have been a difficult question for me, because there's two question what you could ask me and I would have liked that would have been a difficult question for me, because there's a. There are two ways of thinking about that. The Institute of psychoanalysis is basically the, the interpretation of the transference of the unconscious, and it's on the couch, and you hold your position. For me, I psychoanalysis is much more on a live business, looking at the sheer conflict and struggle and yearning and desires and frustrations and what it does to you and how it affects your mood, and it's everywhere. It's everywhere, it's not just on a couch, and that's what I mean by psychoanalysis yeah, it's almost like a science in and of itself.
Colby:It's the science of the human condition, the scientific inquiry or you don't even have to use the word scientific, but it's the inquiry into the human condition really, and it's not boundaried in the ways that other approaches or conceptualisations are, it's not limited. It's because, you know, probably going right back to free association, it's about an unboundaried exploration of each human life that you come into contact with.
Peter:Absolutely absolutely.
Colby:Peter.
Peter:Was your question. Do I have a question of you?
Colby:Yeah, well, I often I say to all the I don't ask a lot of questions in the way I do therapy with children and young people, but if I do find myself asking them a lot, I'll say to them well, I've asked you a lot of questions in the way I do therapy with children and young people. But if I, if I do find myself asking them a lot, I'll say to them well, I've asked you a lot of questions. Is there a question you'd like to ask me?
Colby:hey, that's right yeah, and, and usually I can almost predict. I don't want to say this with any certainty, but I can almost predict what they'll ask. The first things they ask is how old I am, and they're not satisfied with as old as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth, which is what my grandmother used to always say. For a long time I got away with telling them how old I was in months, and then a couple of kids started to work that out, so now I just do it in doggies. I am in doggies good question.
Peter:My question would be what are you, what are you learning from these interesting podcasts? What are you going to distill from it? Maybe it's too soon, but that would be. It's such an interesting project you've got going here Aye, aye. What are you going to learn from it? You don't have to answer my question.
Colby:I will say one thing. I'll say a couple of things. One of those things is that I am learning a lot about a whole range of aspects of practice in um, the in. I call the podcast really a podcast about child protection out of home care and related endeavors. So I'm I'm learning things about you know, for, like you know how to run a good child protection organisation, I'm picking up ideas because I'm speaking to people who've run them.
Colby:But the thing that I would really, that is really coming through for me is is the person reflecting on the person in the role? Because I think for a lot of my career I've been really trying to understand the person in front of me and what. And I think and I think part of this is because psychoanalysis is less popular in Australia than it is in the UK and Europe. It still has standing there and I've interviewed a lot of people from the UK and some from Europe but what I'm getting out of it that I probably knew but didn't consider enough, was the person in the role, if I can put it that way.
Peter:Very good. Yeah, I like that yeah.
Colby:Well, we'll finish on that point. As I said, Peter, thank you very much for agreeing to come on and also for being a good sport about my faux pas of not giving you more prior notice about what questions I might ask. But yeah, thank you again and good luck with the book, and I really hope that there might be an opportunity for us to speak again.
Peter:I hope so. It's been very good meeting you. Thank you for this podcast.
Colby:Thank you you.
