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At first I had trouble with the title of Michael Fordham's latest book because in it there seemed to be so much more about him than about the making of an analyst. His memoir contains a lively and informative account of his father's and mother's families (the Fordhams and the Worthingtons, respectively); of the boy, the youth, and the maturing young man; and of the marriages, the editorships, problems of ageing, and reminiscences of important people in his life. However, it soon became clear to me that the central focus of Dr Fordham's recounting was the discovery of his vocation. Several failures to choose a medical speciality forced him into the field of psychotherapy, and more particularly child psychotherapy, and this odyssey makes a very interesting story. The author says that its writing was suggested by the psychoanalyst Donald Meltzer,
who started it all by suggesting I write an autobiography … which has been therapeutic and started me off on a project that has helped me to accommodate myself to growing old. (Pp. viii and 142)
I looked forward with interest to what the father of child analysis in a Jungian context would say of his own childhood. In his preface he says, ‘that there is something childlike in the language of the chapters on my childhood’ (p. vii). What this meant to me, however, is that it took the skill of a very wise child to avoid self-consciousness and the temptation to psychologize his experiences. But he does acknowledge that he may have been alert to highlight those areas of memory most likely to interest a child analyst. In any case, a careful but restrained manner of self-revelation characterizes the style of this book throughout, extending even to his account of events that only concerned him peripherally. The defect of this style is that he frequently fails to tell us as much as we would like to know; its virtue is a scientific integrity which is on speaking terms with emotionality and ideation, but not too close.
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