You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Nina Coltart was an analytic phenomenon of a decidedly independent stripe, a woman of paradox for whom analysis was always serious business done with humility, a light touch, and, where possible, humor. She said of herself that she would like to be thought of as the most independent of London's Independent Group. The 2011 publication of Peter Rudnytsky and Gillian Preston's tribute volume to and about her offers a happy occasion to review her contributions to analysis. For most American analysts, this will probably be to get to know her for the first time, as she published only during the last fifteen years of her life. Her reputation in Great Britain was outstanding for integrity, wisdom, and an unequaled gift for collegial facilitation. Her professional travels to Australia, Sweden, and the United States spread her influence, energy, and unique lilt, but were confined to a relatively few of her later years. She died by suicide in June 1997 at the age of sixty-nine, in deteriorating health.
Coltart did not value dogma. Her writing is imbued with that most uncommon quality, common sense. Her unique analytic blend of integrity with flexibility had a finely honed sensibility that informed her work with patients, her teaching, and her supervision. She drew extensively on a few pioneers, but showed independence from those she viewed as tending to draw psychoanalysis toward an abhorred dogmatism and rigidity. She cited Freud, Bion, and Winnicott as her forebears, Balint and others