Mute

Adella is a little girl of six who has chosen not to speak; Laura is a child psychotherapist whose job is to put things right. We follow her work of trying to resolve�the problem of this electively mute child through the�detailed verbatim reports of sessions which Laura�presents to a supervision group where we meet Matt,�a fellow therapist, who also brings intimate accounts�of his work with a highly anxious adult patient. The story traces particularly Laura's involvement�with Adella and her colleague Matt, where we see�her struggle with the difficulties of working with a�totally silent child together with the confusion of her�own emotional life as she gets closer to Matt.�Both therapists are unsettled in their way by contact�with their troubled patients and with each other and have to analyse their own feelings and behaviour. But�the main focus is the often moving account of the�development of Laura's relationship to the child in�the consulting room where the cause of her silence is explored and understood to bring about change�and eventually help her find her voice.