Synopsis
"Looking into Later Life" aims to bring alive the relevance and value of psychoanalytic concepts in supporting the core role of those working directly in services for people who are older. The book will also be of interest to analysts and psychotherapists concerned with old age and the application of psychoanalytic thinking in the public sector.

Description
It does not aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the whole field of either old age or psychoanalysis, but to share an approach to thinking useful to clinical psychologists and psychotherapists working with people coming for consultation and intensive psychoanalytic treatment in the latter part of the lifespan.
Though each chapter is different and stands in its own right, there are certain psychoanalytic concepts that appear and reappear again and again. Specifically these are the concepts of transference, countertransference, and projective identification, which are the theoretical and clinical bedrock on which psychoanalytic psychotherapy rests. Each chapter provides a different lens to the reader that will broaden and deepen understanding of such core concepts and their straightforward applicability in strengthening the quality of treatment.
Part of The Tavistock Clinic Series

Contents
Introduction
PART I Overview: present and past
1 Two riddles and an overview by Rachael Davenhill
2 In the beginning by Rachael Davenhill
PART II Mainly depression
3 The metapsychology of depression by Cyril Couve
4 Assessment by Rachael Davenhill
5 Individual psychotherapy by Rachael Davenhill
6 Couples psychotherapy: separateness or separation?
An account of work with a couple entering later life by
Anne Amos and Andrew Balfour
7 Tragical-comical-historical-pastoral: groups and group therapy in the third age by Caroline Garland
8 The experience of an illness: the resurrection of an analysis in the work of recovery by Ronald Markillie
PART III Observation and consultation
9 Psychodynamic observation and old age by Rachael Davenhill, Andrew Balfour and Margaret Rustin
10 Consultation at work by Maxine Dennis and David Armstrong
11 Where angels fear to tread: idealism, despondency, and inhibition in thought in hospital nursing by Anna Dartington
PART IV Mainly dementia
12 Only connect-the links between early and later life
by Margot Waddell
13 No truce with the furies: issues of containment
in the provision of care for people with dementia
and those who care for them by Rachael Davenhill Facts, phenomenology, and psychoanalytic
contributions to dementia care by Andrew Balfour
15 The pink ribbon by A. S. Byatt
16 Caring for a relative with dementia-who is the sufferer? by Heather Wood
17 My unfaithful brain by Rebekah Pratt and Anna Dartington
18 Conveying the experience of Alzheimer's Disease through art: the later paintings of William Utermohlen by Patrice Polini

About the Editor
RACHAEL DAVENHILL is a psychoanalyst and Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She is Head of the Old Age Development Unit and Consultant Clinical Psychologist in psychotherapy in the Adult Department, Tavistock Clinic; Course Organiser for the M.Sc. ‘Psychodynamic Approaches to Old Age'; and Clinical Lead for the National Service Framework for Older People.