Why I Write: From the Dot to the Line – Drawing a Thread Out and Writing it Through · Jennifer Davids

Why does the analyst write? And further why might the analyst write different kinds of pieces such as clinical writing, scientific papers, narratives, or poetry? There are always the considerations of the impact on our patients, their confidentiality and privacy (theirs and ours) but the desire to write and the writing process as well as its products are interesting to explore analytically. In this episode, Jennifer Davids discusses how she relates to her writing process which she links to the process of thinking, gestated as ideas and words and delivered through a process she calls writing through, a form of working through. For her, the process is not without struggle, searching to express herself in a second language that fits the images and sensory-rich world of her mind. And there are anxieties associated with the process of gestating an idea, “Do I have something to say?”, “Can I produce something worthwhile?”, of publishing her work including the anxieties associated with clinical writing and related themes of confidentiality and privacy. Her process is thoughtful, creative, courageous and inservice of the larger group of analyst readers who might be in dialogue with her.

Jennifer Davids, Fellow British Psychoanalytical Society (BPaS), FIPA, born in South Africa, is a chartered clinical psychologist and a Child, Adolescent and Adult Psychoanalyst, who trained full time in child and adolescent psychoanalysis during the mid to late 1980’s at the Anna Freud Centre, and then in adult psychoanalysis at the British Psychoanalytical Society. She is a supervising analyst for child and adolescent psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. After qualifying in 1989 in child and adolescent analysis, Jennifer Davids worked, as a clinical and teaching staff member, at the AFC (Anna Freud Centre, formerly the Hampstead clinic) for 20 years, as well as working in the National Health service as a Consultant Psychotherapist leading a mental health team. She has taught on the faculty of the BPaS, the Tavistock Clinic, IPCAPA, University College and Birkbeck College London, as well as at the Maudsley hospital.

She is on the Harlem Family Institute faculty. She teaches internationally, including facilitating an IPA Thinking Lab, and has published and presented widely, including IPA webinars on the body image, abuse and money. Her written publications include pieces on topics as wide ranging as: inter alia, sexual transference and countertransference, adoption, race, publishing in the digital era, and changes in human relating in the AI- and cyber-universe. Davids was an editorial board member of the British Journal of Psychotherapy. She continues to be a consultant to the IPA in Health committee of which she was a member from 2018 to 2025 and she is a board trustee of the International Play Association (England). She lives, draws, writes, and works in full-time private practice in London, UK.

You can download a copy of the paper here.

This podcast series is produced by the International Psychoanalytical Association as part of the activities of the IPA Outreach Subcommittee. Chair: Gaetano Pellegrini Podcast Coordinator: Florencia Biotti Editing and Post-Production: Massimiliano Guerrieri Cover Image: Fountain pen writing (literacy). Photo by Petar Milošević, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons