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I started out hating this book. It seemed too short, too choppy, and too steeped in a language and perspective I did not understand. When I finally got over myself, reopened my mind, and started listening to the
“music” of Donald Meltzer and his students, I realized that I was reading the work of a master clinician and theoretician. It turns out that this book is a gem. It is a living, breathing window into the mind and the consulting room of a great Kleinian analyst.
There is a paucity of available biographical information about Meltzer, and the foreword to this book written by its editor, Meg Harris Williams, introduces him exceptionally well. Let me start, therefore, by quoting at length from it:
Donald Meltzer was born in New York in 1923 and studied medicine at Yale. After practicing as a psychiatrist he moved to England to have analysis with Melanie Klein, and for many years was a training analyst with the British society. Meltzer worked with both adults and children …. Meltzer taught for some years at the Tavistock, where Martha Harris (his third wife) was head of the Child Psychotherapy training course. As a result of their joint traveling and teaching across the globe, this method of psychoanalytic psychotherapy became established in all the principal Italian cities, and in France and Argentina.
Meltzer's ideas and methods were considered controversial by some. He left the British Society as a result of disagreements about methods of teaching and of selection of candidates for psychoanalytical training. Instead he supervised psychoanalytically oriented professionals in atelier-style groups throughout Europe, Scandinavia and South America, whilst continuing to practice privately in Oxford; later his visits also included New York and California …. Since Meltzer's death in 2004 many international conferences have taken place to consolidate and continue his work—in London, Florence, Buenos Aires, Savona, Barcelona, Stavanger, São Paulo, and Seattle.
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