Reel worlds: Reconstructing the history of postwar child psychotherapy through fiction film

Hist Psychiatry. 2026 Mar 31:957154X261430318. doi: 10.1177/0957154X261430318. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

This article uses British drama film No Place for Jennifer (1950) to argue for the evidential value of staged content of real psychotherapeutic places (Institute of Child Psychology) and practices (Margaret Lowenfeld’s World Technique). In the absence of ‘real’ documentary footage, discoveries of recreated therapeutic spaces within largely forgotten genre films can help reconstruct histories of the ‘psy’ sciences whilst offering insight into the contestations specific sites and practices provoked. Employing Baron’s reformulation from ‘documentary’ to ‘archival document’, it demonstrates that content extracted from previously disregarded films can fill archival lacunas whilst expanding both ‘what can be said’ about the past and how it can be said.

PMID:41915542 | DOI:10.1177/0957154X261430318