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Among psychoanalysts outside Britain, Susan Isaacs is known primarily as the author of The nature and function of phantasy. This paper has been called “probably the most scrutinized and discussed paper in psychoanalytic history” (Reed and Baudry, 1997, p. 471), due to its starring role in the so-called Controversial Discussions. One of several papers in which Isaacs articulated and defended the ideas of Melanie Klein, it has become a standard in our canon, widely assigned in psychoanalytic training programs and, in knowing it, we may think we know Isaacs. Philip Graham's new biography may therefore come as a gentle but welcome reproof to our professional parochialism in revealing that, although in our field, she is known mainly as an exponent of a major figure, Isaacs was all the while a significant leader in other fields. Graham, a British child psychiatrist, introduces us to this other Isaacs, while at the same time showing off ‘our’ Isaacs to those who may know her only in other contexts.
In Graham's account, we learn, for example, that, as first Head of the Department of Child Development at the London Institute of Education, Isaacs was Britain's foremost mid-century proponent of research in child development and champion of progressive, ‘child-centered’ education techniques. We learn that, as director of the experimental Malting House School