Containment and holding environments

In the second presentation this week with Dr Laura Steckley, we are introduced to the concepts of containment and holding environments.

She starts by making clear that containment is not the same as constrainment. Similarly, she highlights how holding environments can sometimes inaccurately be confused with holding therapies.

Containment was first developed as a concept in the 1960’s by Wilfred Bion and is grounded in early childhood experiences of being contained by care givers. Laura makes links between the processes going on within containment and the theory of attachment, covered elsewhere this week with Judy Furnivall. She then goes onto to consider the work of Donald Winnicott, who around the same time period as Bion, developed ideas focussing on the concept of holding environments and the way in which children require to be held both physically and emotionally to help them to manage their behaviour and development.