Everyday Life and the Unconscious Mind is my first book. It was inspired by the students that I taught in the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex. I taught on an innovative degree course that was aimed at mature students who worked in care homes, residential establishments for young people in care, in schools as learning assistants or in drug and alcohol rehabilitation services. Our students were doing some of the most important and difficult jobs in our society today.

​

However, whilst most of them had had training in such things as restraint procedures or safe guarding laws, or company policies, none of them had had any training in how to begin to think about unconscious feelings and behaviour, or about the interactions between themselves and a child or service user.

​

I realised that whilst there are many very good books on the market that considered unconscious processes in the counselling or therapy relationship, there were none that really introduced such concepts in other settings or types of

relationship. I realised that I would have to write it myself and this is what I did.