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We should thank our lucky stars that Nini Herman has begun to write before she is too old to remember as clearly as she does. These personal and professional biographies do not overlap significantly, and one follows the other naturally. She tells us she was born and reared in Berlin until, with her mother and younger brother, she had to seek safety in Switzerland and Bavaria before eventually coming to England where general schooling, medical school, general practice, work in mental hospital, and eventually private psychotherapeutic practice was her career.
In the background was the search for knowledge, understanding, amidst perplexities, doubts and all that was part of hectic love, marriage and children. Her helpers and hinderers were her teachers. Her sensitive, energetic nature demanded more than they gave her and she eventually found those who took more time and trouble to help. First, it was a student of Jung who was barely interested in her childhood problem. Then an eclectic psychotherapist. Next, a student of Sigmund Freud who was interested in childhood but not infancy, and finally a student of Melanie Klein, who was herself a student of two of Freud's early associates and was the first to become deeply involved in the treatment of infants and children, as well as adults. Herman's description of her