Families, Emotions and Therapeutic Preschools: A Systems Perspective C. Jama Adams* Abstract Over the past forty years there has been an evolution in the ways we think about and intervene with very young children with disabilities. Integrated approaches recommend an increasingly complex array of interventions, while resources to implement these interventions are often in short supply. Psychodynamic approaches to organizational functioning can illuminate the systemic consequences of inadequate institutional resources at this time of rapid change. New interpretive frames facilitate adaptive responses to environmental turbulence. In this paper, two of these concepts – Bollas’s the unthought known, and Winnicott’s transitional space – will be used to analyse organizational dynamics and functioning in a small, special educa- tion preschool and the way it developed the understanding, structures, and processes necessary to handle a challenging parent–child dyad. Key words: preschool, special education, unthought known, transitional space, organizational change, African-American, fathers. More and more children between the ages of three and five are presenting in clinical, community, and educational settings for assessment and treatment of disabilities, both emotional and physi- cal. In the USA, approximately 260,000 preschoolers with disability were serviced in 1986 (Lazara et al., 2007); by 2006, the number had grown to over 700,000 (US Department of Education, n.d.). Children, and the heterogeneous family forms in which they live, offer many challenges to the institutions that try to address their often complex needs. The community and educational institutions that are success- ful are involved with their populations. They focus on strengthening, family, staff, and treatment relationships, and on regulating intense affect as an inherent aspect of working with families. In addition, they develop structures and processes that facilitate those goals. Organisational & Social Dynamics 9(2) 165–188 (2009) 165 *Address for correspondence: Department of African American Studies, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, 445 West 59th Street, New York, USA. Email: cadams@jjay.cuny.edu