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What is there between the baby and the bathwater? First, a series of essays by Nina Coltart, one of the preeminent analysts of the British Independent group (those analysts who are allied with neither Freudian nor Kleinian schools, but rather have as a theoretical base the works of Winnicott and Fairbairn). Using the metaphor of the baby and the bathwater, Coltart frames her professional career (the first essay, a case presentation, was written in 1967; the last essay, in 1996). Second, an eminently personal view of the process of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, loosely organized around the metaphors of the baby (that which we keep in our journey) and the bathwater (that which we discard). Finally, we have a highly literate, extremely engaging, thought-provoking journey that covers topics as divergent as the treatment of a man with perversions, a foray into the world of group psychoanalysis, what the requirements are for a person to be a talented and dedicated psychoanalyst, transference, supervision, and the relationship between psychoanalysis and Buddhism. As with the author's previous book, Slouching Towards Bethlehem , to read this book is to be both entertained and educated by a series of unique and fascinating essays.
Three of the essays in this slim volume are devoted to people treated by Dr. Coltart during the course of her career (somehow, to use the word cases seems wrong, since it would not be in keeping with the humanity that the author infuses into her patients' narratives). In returning to these essays, the first thing that struck this reviewer was that Dr. Coltart chose to write about a partial success and two therapeutic failures. This reviewer cannot recall reading about anything other than analytic successes in other authors' works (even in his explanation of the two analyses of Mr. Z., Kohut uses the first analysis, which he views as a partial failure, to explain why Freudian theory is inadequate for the treatment of certain people). These essays