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Elizabeth Spillius writes with such lucidity and with such depth and range of knowledge that, prior to her death in July 2016, she was established as one of the finest proponents and champions not only of clinical psychoanalytic theory and practice, but of thinking psychoanalytically about whatever matters she addressed.
This collection is presented in the Routledge ‘World Library of Mental Health’ series which sets out to celebrate important contributions to thinking about mental health made by leading experts in their fields. Others in the series include Colin Murray Parkes and Jeremy Holmes.
The aim of this volume is to represent the range of Spillius’ thinking and writing, and therefore warrants, in my view, including in this book, 6 of the 13 papers already published in the 2007 collection ‘Encounters with Melanie Klein: Selected Papers of Elizabeth Spillius’ edited by Priscilla Roth and Richard Rusbridger (Routledge, 2007).
Spillius was a successful anthropologist (represented by the first chapter in this book, on conjugal roles and social networks) before she trained as a psychoanalyst. What emerges in the papers in this book is evidence of the continuation of Spillius as anthropologist as well as Spillius as psychoanalyst, heavily influenced by her reading and in-depth knowledge of the work of Melanie Klein. In her paper ‘On becoming a British Psychoanalyst’, she refers to herself ‘looking at the (British Psychoanalytic) society with an anthropologist’s eye’ (p. 148). I suggest that in her writings she casts her anthropologist’s eye more widely than that and in fact looks at psychoanalysis as a whole, and related matters, with her anthropologist’s eye.
Anthropology might be defined as the study of cultures, social structures and the nature of interpersonal relationships, and their development over time. Spillius has conducted such an exploration of a number of aspects of psychoanalysis and some of its socio-political–theoretical history, including delving into t