My experience of health and illness anxiety in adolescents has gradually moved me away from thinking of it as a primarily cognitive problem. This was not where I started. My clinical training pointed clearly in a different direction, and for good reason. The cognitive model of health anxiety is a genuinely compelling one. The account offered in texts like the Oxford Guide to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and in the broader clinical literature, makes a strong case: that what

Conversations with Child Psychotherapists

Not all dark thoughts in adolescence are perverse. Some are collapse. Know the difference—and listen for structure, not content.

When a young person stops symbolising, rituals remain—but meaning drains out. Symbolic collapse is quiet, but devastating. (Lecture 2).

Learn to hear beyond content. This seminar explores how intrusive thoughts reveal psychic structure, using Bion and Meltzer as our guide.