Peter Blake Legacy Interview: Playing More, Interpreting Less in Child Psychotherapy

Why this conversation matters

Peter Blake has spent five decades in child psychotherapy, first as a Tavistock trained child and adolescent psychotherapist and later as a teacher, supervisor and director of training. Across those years he has quietly but firmly challenged one of the core assumptions of traditional psychoanalytic child therapy: that change comes through interpretation.

Peter argues that with children, especially frightened, shamed or traumatised children, interpretation can easily feel exposing, distancing or intrusive. Rather than telling the child what their play means, he invites therapists to enter that play with them, to share tone, rhythm, imagination and bodily presence. He describes this as ‘becoming the play’.

In this Legacy Interview Peter traces how his thinking developed. He speaks about his own analysis, his early Tavistock training, the influence of figures such as Frances Tustin and Anne Alvarez, and his work with refugee children who had witnessed extreme trauma. He reflects on supervision, tone of voice, use of the body, safety in the room and why he believes we must sometimes stop talking about the problem and instead help the child feel alive and accompanied in the moment.

This is an unusually honest conversation about the craft of child psychotherapy. It is also a record of what it looks like when a clinician lets his work evolve.

Join Peter and Jane with his Live Training, Inside the Consulting Room: The Hidden Skills of Child Psychotherapy, on 20 November

Find out more and book your ticket here

Interview highlights

• How playing more and interpreting less can reduce resistance and deepen engagement in child therapy
• Why Peter began to move away from formal interpretation and towards immediacy, playfulness and shared imagination
• What it means to ‘become the play’ rather than sit outside it describing what it means
• How tone of voice, pacing and even posture communicate safety to the child before words do
• Working with traumatised and displaced children without forcing unbearable material too soon
• What supervision should feel like and why psychological safety matters for supervisees as much as for patients
• Why therapists must attend to the body as well as the mind, including their own physical health over the span of a career
• How psychoanalytic thinking can stay alive and clinically useful rather than rigid and performative

What you will learn

By watching you will gain insight into:

Entering the child’s world

Peter explains how to join a child in their play without hijacking it, without interpreting over it and without retreating into polite clinical distance. He shows how to engage as a playmate while keeping a therapeutic mind.

Becoming the play

Peter describes moments in which he stopped commenting on the play and instead became a character or an element inside it. He shows how this allows the child to feel met, not inspected.

Using voice, rhythm and energy

He demonstrates how shifts in tone of voice, pace, silliness and exaggeration can let a child know it is safe to be in shared ‘pretend’. This includes his view that safety is the precondition for any therapeutic work, not an optional extra.

Working with adolescents

Peter talks about leaving the agenda alone. Rather than insisting on talking about school fights, self harm or family conflict every session, he often begins with music, football, games and online worlds. He treats these as forms of waking dream life rather than distractions.

Thinking about trauma without re-traumatising

Drawing on his work with refugee children and families, he explains how to create distance around terrifying experiences so that they can be approached symbolically and indirectly, rather than demanded as explicit narrative.

Conflict versus deficit

Peter offers a clinically useful distinction. Sometimes the child is struggling with conflict, jealousy, rage or loss, and interpretation may help. Sometimes the child simply does not yet have a model for managing a situation, and what is needed is support, co-thinking and structure. He shows how to tell the difference in the room.

Supervision as containment, not judgment

He speaks about what good supervision should feel like. He is candid about the harm caused by shaming, perfection driven supervision cultures in psychoanalytic training, and about the importance of curiosity, play and warmth in helping younger clinicians think.

The body in the work

After a heart attack later on in his career, Peter became outspoken about the cost of absorbing raw distress session after session. He argues that therapists need to develop body awareness and ongoing physical care as part of ethical practice.

Who this recording is for

• Child and adolescent psychotherapists, child psychologists, play therapists and counsellors working with children, young people and families
• Psychotherapists, counsellors and psychologists working with adults who want to understand the roots of distress in early relational life
• Clinicians working in CAMHS, schools, social care, refugee services, adoption and fostering, and paediatrics
• Supervisors, trainers and service leads responsible for supporting early and mid career therapists
• Anyone interested in how psychoanalytic practice with children is evolving

How to watch

• Instant access to the HD recording
• 1-hour CPD/CE certificate included
• Unlimited replays in your MINDinMIND account

About Peter Blake

Peter Blake is a clinical psychologist and Tavistock trained Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist with fifty years experience in child and family mental health in the UK and Australia. He is Director of the Institute of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in Sydney, which offers psychodynamic training in work with children and young people. He continues to work clinically in Sydney.

Peter is widely respected for making complex psychoanalytic ideas usable in ordinary practice. His book Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy: Making the Conscious Unconscious has become a best seller in its field, valued for its clarity, clinical honesty and humanity. Across his career he has worked with children facing high levels of distress, including traumatised and displaced young people in refugee services. His teaching is known for its combination of warmth, playfulness and directness.

Interviewer

Peter is in conversation with Jane O’Rourke.

Jane O'Rourke, founder of MINDinMIND and a former award-winning BBC journalist now practising as a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist, draws upon her combined expertise to create rich and thoughtful conversations with leading mental health clinicians. Her interviews weave together the personal and professional threads of her guests' journeys, capturing the experiences that have shaped their clinical work and thinking.

Details correct at time of recording – October 2024

Further reading

• Peter Blake, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy: Making the Conscious Unconscious
• Anne Alvarez, The Thinking Heart
• Frances Tustin, Autism and Childhood Psychosis
• W. R. Bion, Attention and Interpretation
• D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality
• Stephen Porges, Work on Polyvagal Safety and Play
• Allan Schore, Regulation and Right Brain to Right Brain Communication