An Evening with Dr Anne Alvarez, Sue Reid and Peter Blake

About Dr Anne Alvarez
Anne Alvarez, Ph.D., M.A.C.P trained as a Clinical Psychologist in Canada and the USA before training as a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist in the UK. She is an honorary Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist (and retired Co-Convener of the Autism Service), Child and Family Department, Tavistock Clinic, London.

She is the author of Live Company: Psychotherapy with Autistic, Borderline, Deprived and Abused Children, and the author of The Thinking Heart: Three Levels of Psychoanalytic Therapy with Disturbed Children. She has edited with Susan Reid, Autism and Personality: Findings from the Tavistock Autism Workshop.

A book in her honour, edited by Judith Edwards, entitled Being Alive: Building on the Work of Anne Alvarez was published in 2002. She was Visiting Professor at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society in November 2005. Anne Alvarez has for many years been an appreciated teacher and supervisor in Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen and Helsinki.

Anne is one of psychotherapy’s most admired and respected child and adolescent therapists alive today.

About Peter Blake
Peter’s knowledge, warmth and passion, alongside his extensive experience in the application of psychodynamic therapy with children and adolescents, makes him a much loved and important presenter.

Peter trained as a clinical psychologist in Sydney and worked for the NSW Health Department in Child and Family Mental Health for 25 years. He qualified as a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist in 1983 at the Tavistock Clinic in London. Upon returning to Sydney, he established the Institute of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (ICAPP.) in 1994 and is currently the Director. ICAPP offers online training in child and adolescent psychotherapy.

Peter has worked in private practice in Sydney for the last 25 years. His clinical practice involves seeing children, adolescents and adults and he lectures to students in Universities and Psychotherapy organisations. He provides supervision and training to individual practitioners and organisations such as STARTTS (NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors) as well as organisations in China.

Peter trained in a Kleinian approach and now works in a way that integrates this approach with more recent psychodynamic developments such as the Relational model and post-Bion ways of thinking. His work incorporates many of Winnicott’s thoughts about the importance of play. He is the author of ‘Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy’, now in its third edition (Routledge, 2021) and is a required text for those training in child psychotherapy in many countries. His book is translated into Georgian and has just been released with a translation into Mandarin, selling 1500 copies in the first hour of release. He has published articles in the Child Psychoanalytic Gazette, the Australian Journal of Psychotherapy and the Journal of Child Psychotherapy (UK). He has contributed chapters to ‘Being Alive’ edited by Judith Edwards (Brunner-Routledge, 2001) and “The Importance of Play in Early Childhood Education” by Charles and Bellinson (Routledge, 2019).

About Sue Reed
Sue is a consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist, and an Adult Therapist, with a special interest in autism. She saw her first child with Autism in 1972 and has been working with children and adults on the Autism Spectrum ever since. Her passionate interest in this field led to the founding of the Autism Clinical and Research Workshop in 1986 at the Tavistock, where she was a senior member of staff and where she continues to teach. Later, she also founded the Specialist Multi-disciplinary team in the Child and Family Department. In both endeavours she was joined by Anne Alvarez, with whom she has continued to enjoy a long and creative partnership.

She has lectured and run workshops in the UK, Europe, Israel, Australia, and the USA. Publications include Autism and Personality: Findings from the Tavistock Autism Workshop, edited with Anne Alvarez, and Developments in Infant Observation: The Tavistock Model. She is director of the outcome study on the impact of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy on children with autism, with Dr. Tony Lee. She works with a wide range of patients of all ages and in addition, her specialist work includes the parents and families of those with autism.