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Reading this book was both a sad and joyful experience. On the one hand, it brought home sharply that human life is short. On the other hand, it was uplifting as evidence that psychological realities survive the body's decay.
The writer, Miss Dorthy Gardner, and Dr. D. W. Winnicott who wrote the Foreword, died quite recently: Susan and Nathan Isaacs some years ago. But their ideas live on and the extent of their influence on the course of human development cannot be measured. To have this loving and well-documented record of the life of Susan Isaacs is an inspiration both to those of us who had the privilege of knowing her and to those of a younger generation who are the heirs of what she struggled to conceptualise and to put into practice. As Miss Gardner says in her Preface, “Whether or not she is remembered, her influence will live; but to forget the woman would be a loss to those who find inspiration in seeing great values expressed in a human life”. Dr. Winnicott catches the spirit of the book when he writes: “This attempt at a reconstruction will serve its purpose if it brings Susan alive to those who never knew her, so that some may feel inclined to read her books by being introduced to her as a struggling, striving and radiant human being”.
This introduction to the struggles which lay behind the calm Susan Isaacs whom I knew was a revelation. We learn of her joys and sorrows in a none-too-easy family home in the stark and sombre Lancastrian village in which she was born. We read of her struggles to enter university in spite of financial difficulties and of having left school at fifteen. (She learned the Greek and German necessary for university entrance in three months!). We are not surprised that she graduated from Manchester University with a First Class Honours Degree in Philosophy and a Graduate Scholarship to Cambridge. However, she was turning from Philosophy to Psychology, and this finally led her to Psychoanalysis.
On being asked by Sir Percy Nunn to ta