Teaching Meltzer: Modes and Approaches edited by Meg Harris Williams with Miriam Botbol Acreche, Silvia Fano Cassese, Jeanne Magagna, Neil Maizels, Maria Angélica Maronna, Marisa Pelella Mélega, Kina Meurle-Hallberg, Cecilia Muñoz Vila, Clara Nemas, Robert Oelsner, Maria Elena Petrilli, Lise Radøy, Lennart Ramberg, Kenneth Sanders, Maria do Carmo Sousa Lima, Joao Sousa Monteiro, Virginia , London: , , pp.

This is a collection of essays about how to “teach” Meltzer, both the man and his concepts, about how to convey the experience of being supervised by him and/or of reading him. It has to be considered along with the question by some of whether or not it is possible to teach Meltzer to others—the question of teaching versus learning (from experience). Some consider a familiarity with Freud, Klein, and Bion a crucial prerequisite to understanding Meltzer, especially getting a grasp of his evolving concept of projective identification. Most propose an immersion in reading him with the chance to talk freely about the experience, along with using his concepts to think about clinical examples.

Editor Meg Harris Williams introduces the nineteen authors, with summary statements about each chapter, and says the book

is an attempt to present Meltzer as a teacher through the eyes of those whom he taught. That is, it hopes to convey the “simplicity” which he aimed

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to transmit, which was essentially a reliance on the teaching power of internal objects. (p. xiv)

Some of the approaches to Meltzer as a teacher are outlined in detail and seem appealingly useful. When Miriam Botbol Acreche tried reading The Psychoanalytic Process out loud in groups, it produced a distinctive effect (not specified) that favoured a kind of thinking different from that generated from reading in silence. She then tried reading The Kleinian Development, Part II, in which Meltzer established the principle concept, at its inception, that was linked with what had happened each week, and “immersing ourselves in Melanie Klein's case study of Richard” (Narrative of a Child Analysis). There followed the question of how to approach Freud (with whom her groups were not familiar), and they read The Kleinian Development, Part i, along with Freud's “Little Hans,” and finally, they read Bion in The Kleinian Development, Part iii. Neil Maizels states that Disney's animated Pinocchio and Meltzer's ideas “were made for ea