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In this interview Donald Meltzer begins by describing the background to his interest in the psychoanalysis of children. He says that he regrets the lessening of interest in child analysis, and sees the Kleinian interest in the treatment of psychotic patients as having been, in contrast, a blind alley which produced disappointing results.
He is doubtful about the value of regression or reconstruction in analysis. He describes his preferred stance in child analysis as one of observation, thought and talking rather than of playing with the child and speaks about the overriding importance of the truthful observation and record of experience. This can be covered up but not destroyed, and can be recovered as, by implication, in an analysis. Truthfulness can be distorted in a number of ways, particularly when in a state of projective identification with an object. This distorts the meaning of everything, as well as leading, for example, to claustrophobic anxieties.
Meltzer speaks about adolescence, and the loss of contact between parents and children as the latter become members of social groups. He stresses the need to tolerate this loss while waiting for the child to return to a family orientation and describes the risk of parents projecting their idealised or bad selves on to the adolescent at this time.
He speaks about the influence that his wife, Mattie Harris, had on him, especially in introducing him to English literature, and to the reality of the emotional experience of young babies. He says that he has come to welcome the loneliness of the analytic experience, which he sees as essentially uncommunicable; and that he is sceptical about the value of the political and institutional aspects of analytic life, preferring to remain outside the group.