Growing with the troubled
Contents
Chapter 1 (cont.)
Addition for the m/other-us-all
Introduction
Welcome to another month of me grappling with how to operationalise our m/other tongue. This month’s fiction is fairly long - feel free to skip to the more theoretical writing if you prefer.
For me, the fiction is a support structure that allows me to go deeper, guided and challenged by other people's theories and your comments, to generate my own theory that might help me, or us, in our shared endeavour to lead professional lives driven by care, not capital.
This month’s fiction led me to a fundamental point in my ongoing struggle with operationalising our m/other tongue. While I’m no longer paralysed by the shame I wrote about last month, I remain acutely aware that I’m operating in a world that is misaligned with my inner drive – the drive that says care, not profit, should come first. This awareness brought me back to the literature on envy, especially Melanie Klein’s (1997, 1998) work on its roots in early feeding experiences. I want what the powerful have: influence to change minds, visibility to make a difference. But at the same time it feels, in the words of T.S. Elliot (2014), that ‘The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason’.
So this month, it seems I’m exploring the shadow side of Nurture – the no-win situation I described last time: when things look fine on the surface, but deeper down reveal themselves to be false promises, a not-realness, a junk-food feed of delight but no substance or sustenance over time.
That said, I’m approaching this shadow side through the lens of Theraplay, drawing on Ann Jernberg’s brilliant stance: look for what is going right, and build on that. It’s been a challenge to resist the problem-saturated, deficit-based approach that often shapes how we think about leadership and change – in academia, in clinical work, and in management. Instead, I’ve worked hard to listen to what the fiction has to say about what I think is already working, and how that might serve as a foundation for change and growth. That is my research method.
We’re now into Val and Graham’s second hour of captivity at the motorway service station. At the end of last month’s fiction, Val had stepped outside, overwhelmed and with a sense of doom.
15:00: Order online
The door opened and Val saw Graham standing there, holding it, looking left and right, searching for her. She glanced at her watch, not sure how long she’d been outside. 15:00. Only about ten minutes, but she did feel more settled – the doom less heavy, less present. It had been like sneaking a crafty cigarette behind the bike shed - naughty, de-stressing, mildly rebellious - and the feeling made her smile a little as Graham spotted her and walked over.
“You okay?” he asked.
Val nodded, and found her head seemed to wobble oddly. The kind enquiry made tears prickle in her eyes. Somehow she couldn’t get used to this man, his genuine kindness. At least she thought it was genuine. But the disconcertedness stirred up by feeling out of place and out of control left her doubting everything.
“I could do with something to eat,” she said. “I’ve had a text from the breakdown people. I don’t think they’ll be coming anytime soon.”
Graham grumped and mumbled. She had no idea what he said, but took it as confirmation that he was just as out of sorts as she was with the enforced stay in this land - inhospitable and alien to them, despite being just 10 miles from home.
Without touching her, he somehow gave the impression of placing an arm around her as he guided her back through the automatic doors. She knew that if it had been a manual door, he’d have held it open. She couldn’t quite work out what she made of that. She wasn’t sure she should like it – and yet she did. As much as she would jump to open a door for him, that always just felt like opening a door for him. It didn’t come with the weight of a man holding one open for a woman.
The service station felt fuller now. The table they’d been at before was now occupied by a family. There were queues at the freestanding screens. People seemed to be offering their credit cards to them.
Graham and Val looked at each other.
“Ever used one of those things?” she asked, lowering her voice conspiratorially.
“No,” he said, looking mildly alarmed. “I thought they were advertising boards.”
“We’re a vet and a doctor between us,” Val said, attempting a smile. “Surely we can work it out.” She stood for a moment, uncertain whether her mouth was pulling into a grimace or a grin. “Besides,” she added, “at least with a queue, we can watch how the people in front do it first.”
“Every cloud,” Graham responded, trying to jest but sounding flat and grumpy, as puzzled as Val at why they both felt the need to feign joviality when feeling overwhelmed.
“Positive reframing!” Val rejoined with continued forced brightness.
They watched the families ahead of them with growing intensity, astonished at the speed at which images were tapped, decisions finalised. The queue moved too fast. There was no time to absorb the process before they were the ones at the brightly-lit screen, a holy grail of fries in regular and large.
“What do you want?” she asked, trying to buy herself time.
“You go first,” he replied, also trying to buy time.
Val stared at the screen, trying to widen her eyes enough to take it all in. All the pictures looked the same, yet different. She jabbed at the vegetarian option, thinking it would be simpler than working out what style of burger she wanted. Nothing happened. She tapped it again, exasperated, and looked at Graham.
“Try that,” he said, pointing to a small red box in the bottom right that said Next.
“Oh,” Val muttered, poking it. Now it wanted her to choose sides, adjust toppings, swap sauces. The overwhelm was rising. She pressed buttons at random, then jabbed Next again – and was faced with more decisions: tea, coffee, water, juice. “Just a cup of tea,” she muttered. “With milk.” It had no option for that. Another Next. “Do I pay? Where do I pay?” She waved her card as if the screen would see it and sort her out. The rising panic pushed aside all her fake cheer, though absurdity was bubbling up in her belly at the same time.
“Wait, I’ll add mine,” Graham said, more confident now that he’d watched her stumble through the process. He put on his glasses, but the screen was so big they made the text blurry. He took them off, blinking.
Val reached out and tapped the ‘Anything else?’ button for him.
The queue behind them was growing. Val couldn’t hold back a fit of slightly hysterical giggles, even as her face burned and her eyes stung. Graham pressed Pay.
“I’m not really sure what I’ve ordered,” he said, “but it’ll be an adventure.”
15:15: Holding up the queue
The rain had been teeming down when she’d left home. She liked that word – teeming – though she wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. It hadn’t been part of her family’s vocabulary growing up, but it carried, for her, something of the relentlessness the rain had thrown at her. So very English. Once in the car, she’d struggled out of her jacket to stop the damp from seeping through to her uniform.
And now? She looked up at the grey sky. What would she call it now?
The staff car park was tucked away from the main service station – hidden in a little patch where their cars wouldn’t interfere with paying customers, and where it felt just a little less busy to her.
Drizzle. She loved that English had so many words for rain. For drizzle, an umbrella would do. She picked up her coat, not wanting to leave it in the car to grow cold as well as damp – she’d probably need it later.
“Morning, Chrissy,” the security guard said as she rounded the building towards the entrance.
Drat, she thought. In her reverie over the rain, she’d forgotten to shift her weight onto the balls of her feet to stop her heels clicking on the pavement. The staff might park out of sight, but everyone still had to enter through the same door, right past the little security cabin.
Chrissy! That made her pull her shoulders back, lift her chin, and firm up her stride – not unaware that doing so somehow made her more appealing to the guard. His eyes followed her. One day, she’d say it – Christiana. My name is Christiana, she’d snap. She wanted to say it. But what was the point? Just ignore him. He probably didn’t mean anything by it.
Sometimes, if she kept light on her toes, she could slip through the door before he even realised it was her.
Beneath the entrance canopy, she clicked the latch on her umbrella and gave it a shake, sending small drops scattering. It was busy. Even that tiny pause created a brief human traffic jam. Inside, it felt even more crowded. Half-term, she reminded herself.
She lifted a hand in greeting to Joyce, rolling her mop and bucket towards the toilets, and to Tomacz, sat at the entrance to the arcade area. The sight of them made her smile – familiar faces in familiar places. That sort of recognition was comforting.
She glanced towards the food outlets, wondering if Sarfan was there today. Why she wondered, she didn’t know. He was always there.
She couldn’t see him beyond the queue of people waiting to order. Her sculpted eyebrows raised a little. The planning for throughput, footfall, and profit margin here was impeccable. If anything ran like clockwork, it was the food court. It was, therefore, both remarkable and odd that the flow had stalled. She might have paused to investigate the holdup, but she needed to get into the newsagent and relieve Marnie, hopefully in time for her colleague to get home before the torrential rain moved further up the motorway.
She decided to enter her workspace via the old storeroom – now defunct since the just-in-time delivery system was introduced last year. They’d been told the space would become a staff rest area, but it hadn’t happened yet. Still, it made a handy place to stash her coat and umbrella to dry. She still had a key to the old storeroom, since it had once served their outlet. Getting there meant weaving through the human jam – lots of excuse mes and may I just squeeze throughs – but it was worth it.
Once inside the storeroom, she shut the door and was hit with a blessed wave of quiet – instant noise reduction. She locked it behind her and hung her coat on the end of a redundant shelf. The umbrella, she stood in an unused waste paper basket. The glass panel on the door gave just enough reflection for her to smooth her hair and check that the rain – and the crowd – hadn’t dislodged her makeup.
She opened the inner door.
“Hi, Marnie, I’m here.”
Marnie looked both hassled and bored – the usual mixture. It was always feast or famine with customers, and right now it was famine. All those new arrivals were still in the toilets or queueing for food.
15:30: Awkward pair
They made an awkward pair, waiting for their number to be called. Neither quite knew what could or should be said in such moments, their silence made twitchy by the need to keep an eye on the screen, worried they might miss their turn as the numbers popped up in a seemingly random order.
Val was aware of shifting feelings within her. Waves of joyful silliness would wash over her at the absurdity of it all – two oldies stranded in a young person’s world, trying to navigate a landscape that felt as foreign to them as the surface of the moon. And yet, there were pangs too. This place had felt like the moon when she was a child, too; alien and new. Now it was something stranger still: a hybrid of familiar and fresh. It discombobulated her, making the floor shift beneath her, as though she were aboard a time ship on rough seas.
Graham’s experience was different. He had no childhood memories of places like this, so his disquiet was rooted firmly in the present – the unrelenting noise, the ache in his ankle from standing too long, the fatigue creeping in. He didn’t want to take it out on Val - knew none of it was anyone’s fault - but it was becoming hard. The place seemed to be constantly filling, an endless stream of entrances but no exits. It wouldn’t take much for him to snap at Val if conversation was required of him.
“One hundred and ninety-two,” came a call – a real voice, slightly sharp, accented.
They glanced at each other anxiously, then back at the screen, wondering how they’d missed the flashing number.
“That’s us,” said Val, taking him by the elbow.
At the counter, Graham picked up a brown paper bag and Val steered them both away, out towards the tables and somewhere to sit.
“Let’s see what we managed to order between us,” she said, as Graham began opening the bag.
“Where are the drinks?”
“Oh,” said Val. “I guess they’re not in the bag.”
Back they went. A young man stood behind the counter, looking mildly perplexed, glancing around over the two unattended teas.
“Are those ours?” Val asked.
His reply was incomprehensible to her. She held out the receipt. He pushed the drinks towards them.
“Milk?” she thought he said. She nodded. “Sugar?” she guessed, and shook her head. He handed over six pots of milk.
As she took them, her mind was making up stories about why he was here, working on minimum wage. Undocumented channel crosser? The service station was known as a place where migrants hidden in lorries might slip out when the drivers stopped for a break, en route from the east coast ports. But how could she know? How could she talk to him, when his English was so limited and his accent so thick she could only make sense of him through the shape of the conversation? And really, what business was it of hers?
“Thank you,” she said, with warmth on purpose, offering a genuine smile. The story she’d imagined had opened her heart, made her feel a tenderness towards him – and something in him seemed to register it. His eyes lit up. The guarded flatness in his face shifted, cracked open by a small smile of his own.
Graham and Val moved off again, this time towards a free table by the windows overlooking the carriage ways – the only ones available now. As soon as they sat, Val shivered. No surprise it was still vacant, the old bones of the building held a definite chill, especially by the glass. And of course, they were a bit of an anomaly here – a pair without children, surrounded by families. The traffic thundered by them in both directions. Val watched for a while, but the speed made her dizzy, so she turned her gaze back to the dining hall.
Graham was investigating the bag, pulling out wrapped items and making appreciative noises. Across the room, Val noticed an elderly woman smiling. She smiled back – she liked the look of her. Unpretentious, not overly groomed, a face shaped by connection and kindness. Welcoming. Wrinkly.
She smiled more fully, and the woman did too.
And then Val realised – it was her! There was a mirror on the far wall. She was smiling at her own reflection.
Was she really that old? The thought made her laugh out loud.
“What?” Graham asked.
“I saw this lovely old lady across the room and then realised it was a mirror – it was me!” She laughed again. “Have you found my veggie burger?”
He handed her a wrapped package.
“Thank you,” she said, peeling back the paper, “that looks good.”
“I’m glad you think so,” he replied, “because there are two!”
He handed her another and they both laughed. Their hands brushed as he passed it over, and Val found it pleasant. She laughed, but she also wanted to cry. That small touch, that flicker of realness in the midst of the surreal bustle of the service station food court, hit her deep in the chest.
Growing with the troubled
It gets harder and harder to write these posts. I gave myself the task of using Heuristic Inquiry to examine how we operationalise our m/other tongue. You gave me some specifics to hold in mind. As with all research, the known must be left behind so that the unknown and unfamiliar can be encountered. That unfamiliar holds the potential for new knowledge and change…but it may also be a load of codswallop. And here I am laying it out in front of you in real time - how exposing is that?!
I’ve been processing envy – the craving for fast food-style affirmation and the quick fixes of belonging that come from toeing the line of ‘received wisdom’. I’ve been connecting that to early traditional psychoanalytic theory, which feels so male-centric. (Penis envy, anyone? No, ta.)
But then, how do you change systems when you’re not in a position of power?
In embracing this idea of tacit maternal knowing, I seem to find myself beyond the pale – outside the manstream – at every level.
Knowing more than you can say (tacit knowing)? Well, if you can’t say it, how can you share it?
Mothers! What do they know?
Being in the moment with constantly shifting insight? Make up your mind, say something solid, stop waffling!
Oh boy, I know those voices of Othering and exclusion so well!
In this fiction, Val and Graham – viewed by others as old, as marginal figures in the hustle and bustle of everyday normality, maybe Othered by the modern world because they’re rubbish with technology – are obliged to be immersed in it to get some form of nurture. I’m immersed too – staying with the trouble, as Haraway might put it – trying to make sense of how this touches my tacit wisdom – that inner knowing of what a more just and caring world might feel like and then how to enable that feeling to be the driving force of organising action.
When struggling, Theraplay tells us, go to Structure. Structure keeps us safe – it gives us outside to inside regulation and organises us. For me, that structure is the research methodology and methods I’ve chosen. So, each time I get lost, I return to the fiction.
This month, I asked myself: what three things stood out from the fiction?
The queue – and how Val and Graham create disruption simply by being themselves.
Christiana forgetting to walk on tiptoes so her heels don’t click and draw the unwelcome male gaze.
Val seeing a kind old woman, before realising it’s her own reflection.
1) Being true to our m/other tongue disrupts the norms imposed by the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. It makes the Non-Problem visible and opens up a space for play.
It might sound obvious, but it’s worth saying: if you don’t fit in, you don’t have to. Not fitting in becomes its own form of resistance. It reminds those in power – especially those wielding it for their own benefit rather than in service of others – that there are other stories to be told. People notice when you don’t fit. It might irritate them. They’ll invent stories about the disruption, and label the disruptors as stupid, old, rebellious, seditious, even criminal.
(I bet Val and Graham, in their ‘ignorance’, could wreak as much IT havoc as a seasoned hacker. Now that’s a story I might like to write!)
Humans have a need to fit in - it is part of our attachment story, and part of why Theraplay works. Attachment theory tells us what humans are likely to do for survival, and fitting into a tribe is part of that survival strategy. It doesn’t tell us which tribe is ‘right’ – only that we’re wired to find one. Fitting in helps us feel safe. Standing out makes us vulnerable to being picked off. Standing out takes courage.
It’s quite easy to write statements like that – bold, resonant, slightly sweeping. But I remember ending last month’s post with this line:
“And in our pursuit of a better world, as leaders of change, we may need to put our bodies on the line – not as soldiers, but as creative resistors, as mothers who gestate, birth, and nurse new ways of being professionals.”
At the time, I thought – heck, that’s a big statement. What do I mean by that?
We do need to stand out if our leadership, through our m/other tongue and through our tacit maternal knowledge, is to make a difference. If we’re to change a world currently organised by fiscal wisdom into one led by the wisdom of caring for the vulnerable - not as duty or obligation, but as a cherished vocation - then we are going to be disrupters. We are going to mess up systems that are not designed with care as the organising principle.
Val and Graham are not just metaphorically on the line – they are bodies in it. Even amid all the overwhelm, Val manages to make a connection. Not with a singular, fixed truth – but with a possible story she creates in the moment. She knows it might not be his truth, this young man behind the fast-food counter. But within her, the story enables her to live her truth: that of caring for people.
Their communication is beyond language. Beyond fear. They connect, human to human. This young man is Sarfan – though, at this point in the story, his name hasn’t yet been given to him.
I found myself returning to Garland’s 1982 paper, Group-Analysis: Taking the Non-Problem Seriously. She draws on Winnicott’s idea that therapy takes place in the overlap of play spaces – originally referring to the shared space between patient and therapist. Garland argues that therapeutic transformation doesn’t come from addressing the Problem head-on – that is, the issue that brings the individual to therapy – but through engagement with the Non-Problem: in a group setting, this includes becoming part of the group system and its particular set of rules. In this context, play becomes a marker of healthy group functioning. This idea chimes with Panksepp’s (2005) view that when the PANIC systems are activated, the PLAY systems can’t function optimally.
Val is hovering between panic and play as she struggles with the electronic ordering screen, aware that she doesn’t quite belong in this ultra-modern world. She’s not a digital native, and she disrupts the queuing system – a system built on the assumption that people can navigate technology quickly, where speed trumps human contact.
In profit terms, the Non-Problem is the loss of interaction. But from a human perspective, it’s a real Problem. Val reconnects with her sense of play through internal narrative, imagination and empathy, which in turn allows her to open up to human connection.
What Sarfan’s ‘truth’ might be is secondary to resolving the Non-Problem of disconnection. The real transformation happens when two people – Val and Sarfan – manage to meet each other as humans, to connect despite their struggles. That connection, that shared and genuine smile, is made possible through imagined narrative.
2) Some wise people are already able to manage the social norms and live their m/other tongue by going under the radar. Their smarts need to be seen and recognised for what they are, clever adaptations.
Christiana was just a passing character in my first NaNoWriMo ‘bash it out’ draft – a nothing, a shop worker, someone essential to the running of the world but deemed ‘not important’ to the bottom line. Indispensable yet disposable. But as I started editing and digging deeper into character motivations and how the plot might unfold, I realised she needed a name – and a story. And with that, she quickly became a central figure for me.
Christiana started to shine a light on those who already lead with their m/other tongue, even if they’re far from traditional leadership roles. People like Christiana are often Othered in our culture – working low-paid service jobs, dismissed as ‘unambitious’, or as people who ‘didn’t go on to higher education’. Yet here she is: someone who clearly cares, who adapts, who thinks, who puts others first, who enjoys her life – and is met, at times, with a caring response in return. Where there’s mutuality in relationship, she offers of herself. Where there’s mismatch, she adjusts – not by making a scene, but by keeping her dignity.
In my reading around and unpicking of the fiction this month, I came across Judith Moran also writing about taking the Non-Problem seriously as a tool for social justice work.
This feels like an important insight. My anger at the treatment of women in patriarchal culture can sometimes push me into binary thinking. If you’ve followed these posts for a while, you’ll remember that last year I used The Mad Man in the Attic to explore my feelings about men – trying not to Other them in the same way patriarchy and neoliberalism Other women. But Christiana prompts me to see that the whole picture is far more nuanced. There are many shades of grey.
Take the security guard: for Christiana, he’s a Non-Problem. For me, he would be a Problem – I’d feel visible and violated in a very uncomfortable way. It would flip me back into shame.
I found myself reflecting again on the tipping point between autonomy versus shame and initiative versus guilt – as we discussed last month. Christiana’s choice to minimise the impact of inappropriate, intrusive comments from the security guard by walking on her toes isn’t a betrayal of the cause. It’s a choice to use her power in the way that she prefers. She chooses to connect with those who respond in kind, and conserve energy where that connection isn’t possible.
Change is individual, and it’s hard. Last month I wrote about how fear and growth are entwined. Sometimes, in the pursuit of change, we need rest. We can’t fight all the time. As a mother might do, we pick the battles that are important. And to do that, we need a clear sense of what our end point is.
I would argue that as therapists and therapist educators, in leading organisations that care, and as practitioner researchers, our end point is cultivating a felt sense of safety through and in relationship, making a place where people are able to play. That is the foundation for all change, as the Theraplay wheel reminds us.
Some of us who lead using our m/other tongue may take a radical stance, feeling hot and angry at systems that refuse to hear the shift from problem-saturated thinking (which so often leads to victim blaming – see last month and November 2024) towards a strength based approach. Our hunger for belonging, often born out of deep experiences of exclusion, can make us ravenous for change.
Others lead differently. Their strength lies in picking their battles. Not starved of belonging, they’re able to choose how and when to nourish themselves and others. Both approaches are valuable, and I’m curious about how they might work together.
Unpicking that dynamic feels like the next step – moving from just being angry to actually operationalising our m/other tongue. That’s something I know I’ll return to in future posts.
Do we challenge the status quo head-on to centre our m/other tongue in our work? Or do we work with it, softening from the inside? The binary framing of this choice is insidious. There is no single right answer. It depends on the context, the capacity, the moment, the need. Sometimes it’s just not your fight, but you choose to support those who are fighting. Sometimes it’s too much. Sometimes it’s not even the right question. And sometimes, fighting only strengthens the oppressor. At other times, it might be the right action, but for the wrong reason – or at the wrong time.
The real question isn’t who wins the battle, but how, when, and where the idea of battle can be dismantled, its destructive energy redirected, and whether everyone is cared for in the process. Battle is the Problem. The solution lies in taking the Non-Problem seriously.
Care grows when we reject the ‘us and them’ mindset, and embrace a We. We don’t fight. We don’t avoid. We search for the Non-Problem – and we work out how we can play (while drawing on all eight other Theraplay core concepts).
That’s the space both Val and Chrisiana create in their own different ways. Neither are caught into I-spaces, despite the pressures of an environment shaped to prioritise self-interest and individualism. They hold open a We space, despite the pressure to pursue personal desire.
3) In this process of leading through our m/other tongue, we must learn to recognise ourselves.
Christiana doesn’t realise she’s leading with her m/other tongue when she chooses which battles to fight. She just looks to fulfil her sense of self by caring about and caring for the relationships she encounters. She’s simply living – curious, interested, open.
I imagine her as someone born in the UK to migrant parents. Writing here in Bedford, a town with a rich history of workers from all over the world coming to support industry and build cultures, I picture her with Italian roots – a heritage where a proud, distinct Italian identity has, over time, coexisted with the experience of becoming British. Not without its bumps, of course, but still a process of integration rather than assimilation. Christiana’s tacit knowing flows from that lived experience of immersion and integration.
Val doesn’t see what she does as leading with her m/other tongue - she simply likes who she sees in the mirror. The tacit knowing she brings is from a different history.
As their author, I’m on the outside looking in, trying to understand these characters - why they are motivated to behave in the way they do, what qualities they bring to the actions that my non-conscious mind has caused me to write. And of course, both of them are also aspects of me.
Leading through our m/other tongue asks us to recognise and own our identities as mothers. Not necessarily in the biological sense, but as people and professionals who choose to live and work through a tacit maternal knowing, making care our central organising principle in designing and running systems and in the way we prioritise choices and processes on a daily basis.
That kind of leadership might mean holding up the queue. It might mean disrupting the flow of profit for those in power. It might mean putting our bodies on the line as creative, playful resisters. It might mean constantly returning to Ann Jernberg’s reminder that all we really need to do is observe how mother and infant thrive together. And it might mean managing the panic of not always knowing exactly what you’re doing.
One thing I’m definitely taking from all this is that by shifting from problem-solving to playing in the space of the Non-Problem, we move from passively staying with the trouble to growing alongside the troubled, helping them find their way back to healthy play.
Addition for the m/other-us-all
Look for the skilled m/othering that people do and name it, as it is often hidden in plain sight and not seen as skill or knowledge. First spot it in others and then in yourself. Share what you find!
Bibliography
Chatzidakis, A., Hakim, J., Littler, J., Rottenberg, C., & Segal, L. (2020). The care manifesto: The politics of interdependence. Verso.
Eliot, T. S. (2014). Murder in the cathedral. Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9780571307302.00000005
Garland, C. (1982). Group-Analysis: Taking the Non-Problem Seriously. Group Analysis, 15(1), 4–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/053331648201500102
Hamington, M. (2024). Revolutionary care: Commitment and ethos. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003368625
Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.
Jernberg, A. M. (1979). Theraplay: A new treatment using structured play for problem children and their families. Jossey-Bass.
Klein, M. (1998). Love, guilt, and reparation and other works, 1921-1945. Vintage.
Klein, M., & Segal, H. (1997). Envy and gratitude and other works: 1946-1963. Vintage.
Millner, J., & Coombs, G. (Eds.). (2022). Care ethics and art. Routledge.
Panksepp, J. (2005). Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal emotions. Oxford University Press.