JSM: Could you first of all let us know what has most impressed you in the way Meltzer worked with you in supervising your clinical work for so many years?
CSL: Many things have left a vivid impression on me over the years, really… But perhaps what has most impressed me… most, and more lastingly, was the way he listened. He had a unique way of listening… a quiet way of listening… quiet, and yet there was a sort of sweet tension in his listening, and even so a complete openness to whatever he might be going to be told… This was crucial in creating an unusual form of silence in the room. in creating an atmosphere which I had never found before; a warm, and concentrated silence… Only after a few years did he tell us that he thought that the most important aspect of the setting, (beyond, of course, those more obvious material aspects of it), was the concrete presence of a thinking mind in the room. I never forgot it, so crucial it seemed to me. And yet, I haven't seen this written in any of his published works, or indeed anywhere else.
JSM: Do you think that this may somehow also apply to his way of working as a supervisor?
CSL: Absolutely! This was my own experience of working with him in supervision, anyway. Only some time later did I realize that at the core of his way of listening was his passion for mental life; his fascination for the mystery of mental life… Over the years, however, I gradually realized that many different things really go into his unique way of listening… it was not easy to read all that goes into it…
JSM: Did you immediately sense something of this unique atmosphere at the first session with him? Was this always like that with him, in your experience?
CSL: Oh yes! Always… Well, I happened to have first taken to him the case of a charming little girl of four years-old who had been sent to me diagnosed psychotic with traces of autism. In the very first session with me, her severely inhibited capacity for symbol formation began to flourish, and in a very few sessions words also began to emerge. I saw this little girl in analysis for a year before beginning my supervision with Meltzer. I will never forget the way he observed this little girl's drawings. the sweet, silent heed he did put in watching each drawing,
Publicada em Teaching Meltzer: Modes and Approaches. Edited by Meg Harris Williams. London: Karnac, 2015
Psicanalista, membro associado da Sociedade Portuguesa de Psicanálise e da International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) E-mail:
Psicanalista E-mail:
one by one… and then the way he reacted to the emergence of her words… he reacted to it as if witnessing something really mysterious… and it was his quiet, his sweet way of observing it that actually drew my attention for this ‘miracle’, as he himself called it… It was the way he reacted to it that made me realize how marvellous it was, really… the marvel of the birth of mental life in close contact with a thinking mind… it was his own fascination that showed it to me, and provided me with the words to name my as yet unrecognized feelings about it. Only some years later did I happened to read him saying, in an interview he gave to C. M. Smith in 1998, that
“Thinking with passion is the unconscious thing” (p. 202).
This way of seeing things really changes you. And this is what gives you the real sense of what it means to be an analyst, more than any theory or remarks on technique or formal questions about the setting, important though they are.
JSM: And yet, it cannot be taught…
CSL: No…I don't think it can… but it can be learnt… And one day, it may come to you as you sit in your consulting-room, or even in the lecture room.
JSM: Do you have the experience of having somehow conveyed this to your students and colleagues at the Institute?
CSL: …to the patients, to begin with, yes… But I believe some colleagues and also some students grasp it as well. For it must come from inside you, through the music of your voice, and in the quality of your presence in the room. otherwise I don't think it works. In the interview that I've just mentioned to you, Meltzer stated that
‘The music of the voice is the important thing, which is that of your internal objects, which you share with your patients.‘ (p. 202)
You can also experience this all the time in Meltzer's own way of working in supervision. You can even listen to it in his silences as he thinks on what he has just heard…
JSM: But then, of course, you have to deal with all the difficulties inherent in trying to introduce Meltzer's clinical and theoretical thought to both students and young colleagues.
CSL: Ah, of course!…
JSM: What sort of difficulties do you particularly have in mind?
CSL: Well, as you know, the claustrum theory presents specific problems that are different from those in the theory of aesthetic conflict, of course. The first obstacle insofar the claustrum theory is the question of their familiarity with both the Kleinian and post-Kleinian thought. Without some acquaintance with this way of thinking, you can hardly go anywhere into Meltzer's thought… Without some perception of the concreteness of the unconscious phantasies, of projective identification, of internal characters, etc., you have no way of approaching Meltzer's thought…
JSM: So how do you deal with it?
CSL: First thing is never to push theory ahead of experience. Since, however, Kleinian thought has for a long time not been central in our traditional way of doing analysis, some people have hardly had any contact with it, even in their own analyses. Meltzer's discovery that
the drama of projective identification ultimately unfolds not in the external mother's inside, as the Kleinians still have it today, but in the internal mother's inside is the first key idea of the whole view of the claustrum. You therefore have to find a way of getting closer to the idea that by projecting a part of the personality into the external mother, the patient, and indeed all of us (for you may see what he thinks about this in chapter 9 of Claustrum, ‘Concerning the Ubiquity of Projective Identification’, pp. 127 ff.) – so that by projecting a part of the personality into the external mother, we concretely experience the internal mother's inside divided into three very different spaces, each of which is shown to define a very different phenomenology, etc.. So how are you going to introduce students, and even young colleagues, to all these findings and ways of thinking if they do not have at least some familiarity with the Kleinian thought in their own analysis? This, I find, puts you a real challenge. For as you know, it really takes a very long and hard path before you can find these things in your own analysis, and can then begin to see them emerge in the consulting-room…
JSM: So how do you deal with it?
CSL: At first I really didn't know how to bring them any close to all these findings. Then I decided to begin by studying ‘Little Hans’ with them. This is of course the foundational paper of child analysis, and to my mind, the more beautiful clinical case ever written!…
JSM: …it is interesting because Meltzer himself also found it exactly the same; the most beautiful…
CSL: …yes, yes! It was funny when I told him this and he said that he too had always thought the same about ‘Little Hans‘! It has always been wonderful to revisit this paper!
So then I thought I could perhaps try to discuss ‘Little Hans’ with them though viewed through three different eyes: Freud's, Klein's, and Meltzer's. So I first discussed it with them as it is, that is following Freud's ways of thinking. Then I would re-examine it though this time in the light of the Kleinian thought. And finally, I would once again study it all though now trying to read it through Meltzer's eyes. This, I thought, could help in bringing them a first step close to some of the fundamentals of Meltzer's thinking… a first step, of course, but nevertheless some distance is hopefully bridged over.
JSM: How do they usually respond to this approach?
CSL: Usually they feel very interested, even surprised, seeing how the same material can be seen in such different lights. In this way, students gain a sense of history, a sense of the evolution of concepts and an idea of how new concepts in this area may give us a better account of concrete clinical phenomena and allow us to understand them better. Seeing this case under these three different lights, we may even draft a sort of philosophy of psychoanalysis!
JSM: Do they usually respond positively to Freud's original paper or do they feel it…
CSL: …oh yes! It's impossible not to respond with enthusiasm to it! At least to my own wonderment! It becomes an enjoyment!
JSM: So this is the first step you take to open up the path to Meltzer's thought.
CSL: Yes… for then the path is paved to take another step forward. This is ‘Dick’, Klein's extraordinary 1930 paper. As you know, this is in itself an illuminating introduction to Klein's own historical paper of 1946. So by studying ‘Dick’ they can gain at least some sense of the meaning
of some of these key concepts; a sense of their clinical significance through a vivid, intensely emotional case - the concreteness of the unconscious phantasies, the concreteness of the internal life, of projective identification… Besides, I also take up ‘Dick’ to briefly introduce them to Klein's PSD, even if this concept was only formally introduced by Klein a few years later (1935). I still try to give a few sessions of ‘Richard’, together with Klein's remarkable notes, of course.
JSM: So in this way you now move some steps closer to Meltzer…
CSL: I believe so… for the next step is Meltzer's ‘Barry’ (1975; Weddell 1975). This is a very difficult paper. And yet, it is crucial in order to understand one of his greatest findings…it was this case that showed him the different spaces in which the internal mother's inside is very concretely experienced to be divided into consequent upon intrusion; the spaces. Barry's drawings are essential… they allow them to visualize Meltzer's topographical conception of the internal mother's internal worlds and their internal functions. It's really fascinating… So, you see, I try to follow this fil rouge from Freud's ‘Little Hans’ to Meltzer's ‘Barry’. Without a sense of this developmental line, you won't be equipped to gain some insight into the metapsychological and clinical meaning of the claustrum theory. Then, if they really wish to, they can begin reading Claustrum (1992), particularly its fifth chapter, ‘Life in the Claustrum’.
JSM: Do you usually make any attempt to discuss the paper ‘The Relation of Anal Masturbation to Projective Identification‘?
CSL: Yes, but it almost always ends in failure… You see, Meltzer read this paper in 1965, at the 24 International Congress of Psychoanalysis in Amsterdam, and published it the next year in the apparently without any changes. The paper is terribly dense. When he wrote it, five years after Klein's death, Meltzer naturally assumed that Klein's language was a sort of ‘maternal language’ of everyone in his circle, and he was right, of course. This was, in fact, a ‘golden age’. But this period of euphoria is already behind us for decades now. As far as I know, he never re-wrote this article; nor I know of any extensive commentary of it. And yet, this is a historical paper in the sense that it was in this paper that he first brought to the public eye his insight that the drama of projective identification into the external mother ultimately unfolds inside the internal mother. It was a marvellous discovery. And yet, unfortunately, the paper seems now to have fallen into neglect. I have read it several times myself but even so I still don't understand it well enough. I always recommend it to students, and of course always make myself available to discuss it with them, but I realise it is too difficult. They tend to drop it, and I understand them. One day Meltzer told us about what happened when he first read it in Amsterdam. Colleagues of his went on gossiping through the corridors about his being crazy, a pervert, having a dirty mind…! He loved it! So, you see, even for his own senior colleagues at the time this was quite an unpalatable paper. Then, of course, it has become a sort of classic, but unfortunately hardly read these days.
And he then went on saying:
“Kindness means generosity, forbearance, a readiness for sacrifices, and a capacity for intense emotional interest in a person. It is a very complicated concept.” (p. 182).
It also implies, I think, a sense of respect… of respect for the intimacy of others.
JSM: And it was in that interview too that he made a rather surprising mention of the question of attitude…
CSL: This is yet another fundamental aspect in learning with him… He made it in connection with the role of kindness in clinical work. Du Ry asked him what he thought was the most important thing he had brought to psychoanalysis. He surprisingly answered: ‘An attitude…‘ Just that: an attitude… What he thought he brought that was new to psychoanalysis, after dozens of important papers and books, and thousands of hours in the consulting-room, he said: an attitude…
JSM: …I felt puzzled with it!… What do you think he meant by that?
CSL: Everything I've just said about the way he listened: his passionate feelings for the enigmas of mental life, his sense of time… This does change things in the consulting-room and certainly in people too… And these were really the most important things I learnt from him. I really think it is a great loss that this aspect of his as an analyst and person remains so unknown.
JSM: This too seems linked to his sense of the importance of history, don't you think?
CSL: …of his respect for history, yes… of his respect to how things really grow and develop. All this is why it is even more important for me to convey to both students and colleagues all these unwritten sides to his thought and the way he actually worked, and the importance that his being passionate with the enigmas of mental life was for all these fundamental aspects of him as a teacher…
JSM: Meltzer's keen attachment to truthfulness too goes into all you have just said, and in particular into what he called an attitude, don't you think?
CSL: Absolutely!
JSM: I remember a line from him witnessing to his unfailing attachment to truthfulness:
“It means that what you do in the consulting-room comes first, and what you preach is simply an outgrowth of what you do in fact. If it isn't, then of course you are just a fraud” (1998, p. 202).
CSL: Quite… And this too applies to his unique way of listening. Truth was central in his agenda.
I don't want to end this conversation with you without saying how deeply grateful I am that I had the privilege of knowing Meltzer and discovering the pleasure and beauty of his working mind. ‘Beauty’ is the right word, I think… Now, as I look back after all these years, I believe I understand better how right he was when he said that ‘thinking with passion is the unconscious thing.‘ 30 Setembro 2014
JSM: As this difficult article lies at the root of the claustrum theory and is one of its pillars, how do you deal without it, then?
CSL: I don't really think one has now to go through it to get an understanding of Meltzer's insight. The idea is certainly crucial though not necessarily the paper itself. For then Meltzer wrote a series of papers and books in which these ideas are re-examined in great detail (cf. 1973, 1984, 1986, 1992 in particular, and 1996). Nevertheless, I also think it is a pity that the paper itself has slipped into oblivion. You loose the sense of the source, you see. Besides, it also was in this
paper that Meltzer came up with another fundamental insight: his idea of pseudo-maturity. His concept has crucially improved upon both H. Deutch's as-if personality and Winnicott's false-self. And it too has fallen over into neglect by now.
JSM: So it would appear that by proceeding along this broad developmental line you described, students may be better prepared to value clinical experience and insight in the first place, thus avoiding the trap of theory first, do you think?
CSL: I believe so, yes… For this is the way things are formed… it goes into you through years of clinical experience, through observation… This was how psychoanalysis itself was born and has always developed… and this is why to place theories ahead of observation and clinical experience seems a little psychotic, really… and I think it is very damaging for both students and therapists, and above all, for patients themselves, of course. This is why I always prefer to give seminars on child analysis.
JSM: And yet, theories are important…
CSL: Oh yes!… Theories are really important… but they come afterwards, not before. They even come instead of, you see. And this is a disaster… But it's true, they are crucial… they are crucial in order to string observation and experiences and insights together and give them an intelligible direction. But they really have to mature internally… and it takes a very long time… Eventually, they even grow into good internal objects, I think; and they some times even guide you and inspire you. But you have to learn to wait and most people don't want to wait…It's terrible to hear people parroting theories; you feel they don't have the slightest idea of what they are talking about…And then, there's also the danger that they push theories into their patients. I once said to Meltzer that when people force theories into the consulting-room, as it some times seems to appear in their presentations of clinical cases, it sounds as if they were speaking from inside the claustrum. ‘Oh yes!’ he said. ‘Quite… It's like seeing the world through mother's arse hole…’ This may serve as a defence from actually experiencing things emotionally in the room and not standing being so unsure. And, you see, an extraordinary clinician and theorist though Meltzer of course was, he never during supervision explained theories unless asked… not even his own… If we brought a theoretical question to him, he would then go into it, though just enough to make things clear at that specific point. I appreciated his way of relating to theories because even before meeting him, this had been my own way of working.
JSM: Another aspect of Meltzer's thought was his sense of time…the importance he has always given to time. Your way of following a historical developmental line when trying to introduce students to his thought seems to allow, even perhaps promote, this sense of time.
CSL: Yes… Well, as you say, this really was another crucial aspect of Meltzer's thought which has always left a vivid impression in me… As far as I know, this is not written down either anywhere… His acute sense that progress does require time… a very long time… no matter how long. People sometimes put pressure on me to give them all Meltzer's theories in just a few seminars… everything in just a few hours, you see… This sometimes results from their enthusiasm and curiosity, but I think it sometimes also seems to be rooted in greed. And we again return to the way Meltzer listened, you see. For I never felt that he was hurrying things on; never… He would occasionally tell us that it was no use to speed things up in analysis, to force things ahead of their time…it wouldn't work like that.
JSM: And then comes the key question of the right time to interpret.
CSL: Oh yes! This too was central to him. He gave enormous importance to learning to wait for the material to emerge; to wait until the meaning appears to you, until it carries conviction. Only then does it seem likely that it too makes sense to the patient. He told us he could just listen to a patient for months, even for years without really understanding what was the point with her or him…And what would he then do about it? Well, he would just keep waiting, and listening, and yet, and keeping the concrete presence of a thinking mind in the room, and hoping that, one day, meaning comes up…
JSM: What you said about the importance of time in Meltzer's way of working seems to me to relate to another key quality in his way of teaching which you briefly mentioned above: his kindness…
CSL: …oh yes! This too was immediately felt in the atmosphere he created in the room… Only when I read an interview he gave to Marc du Ry in 1997 did I again find the right word for my feelings about this other key aspect of this unique atmosphere. In this interview he put:
“Kindness seems to me to be the absolutely essential requirement for an analyst.” (p. 182)
JSM: So your way of introducing Meltzer's thought is primarily to make students aware of those unwritten qualities of his that go into what he himself called an attitude?
CSL: Very much so… For this is the heart of it, I think. Take his idea of the concrete presence of a thinking mind in the room. It's a bit like what you expect from mother's reverie. It doesn't always get across in words but only in the emotions that are really there, allowing internal objects to come together and eventually reach an understanding… This makes a creative link between this psychoanalytic couple as they come closer to the heart of an emotional dialogue.
JSM: A fragile dialogue…
CSL: But it must be fragile… It cannot be otherwise… and it has to be taken care of and shielded from all sorts of attacks… We are sometimes interrupted in our thoughts and emotional presence in the room by internal ‘parasites’. This creative link is often so deep, and at the same time so fragile, that if I allow my attention to wander even for a fleeting moment, the patient may suddenly say: ‘Sorry, I've got lost now … I don't know what I was saying…I've lost the thread…‘. So, you see, such links have really to be cared for. This mostly happens with patients, of course, but it sometimes also happens with supervisees.
JSM: Is this one reason why you so value Meltzer's remarks on kindness?
CSL: Yes… you should not allow your negative counter-transference to interfere too much; and the key importance of kindness, in Meltzer's sense, really assists you in shielding this fragile link to patients as well as with young colleagues. Besides, your attachment to kindness widens the field of possible projections from the patient as well as the supervisee; it should be inherent in such dialogue.
JSM: I would like to return to the question of how you manage to bring Meltzer's thought to young colleagues. For so far you have mainly focused on students, I think.
CSL: Well…they share the same sort of problems that I've already mentioned about students, but of course my approach is different whether I'm working with students or colleagues. With colleagues in so-called supervision, you have the clinical material they bring to you, and so you can always stick to the material and avoid being drawn away into discussing theories. I always focus on what seems to be the core emotional conflicts in the particular material they bring to me. Then, every time some concrete aspects of Meltzer's thought seem to turn up in the material, I try to carefully look into it and make it visible; but only those aspects that I believe are really there in the material.
JSM: Why did you say ‘so-called’ supervision?
CSL: …well, I really don't feel like super-vising anyone… I never liked the word, really… What I can do best is to think with them and try to follow the material as closely as I can… to watch how the patient comes alive in the reports they bring; and this implies paying attention to the music of their voices. In the interview he gave to C. M. Smith, Meltzer remarked
“…one doesn't really offer patients a therapy; one offers them interest. Interest, and thoughtfulness and the honest expression of one's ideas…” (1998, p. 202).
This, I think, also applies to the work with young colleagues.
JSM: And how do they usually respond to this approach?
CSL: Usually quite well, I think… You feel the atmosphere changing in the consulting-room. Working along these lines is perhaps one of the reasons some of them ask me to organise seminars on Meltzer's thought, and even to arrange some extra-curricular sessions on this or that aspect of Meltzer's theories in order to widen the scope of their clinical work. For this way of working makes the path towards Meltzer's thought more authentic, I think.
JSM: You said before that you have found difficulties in introducing the theory of aesthetic conflict but that these difficulties are of a different nature from those you have come across in the claustrum theory.
CSL: They are different, of course. The first problem I've always come across concerning the theory of aesthetic conflict, even with post-graduate colleagues, is that they tend to see it as a theory about aesthetics and art, and so on… As I see it, however, it is just the other way around… Meltzer's theory is first and foremost a clinical vision. Then, of course, it may eventually be illuminating in these areas too, but this wasn't how it has developed. Meltzer's closeness to Martha Harris and Meg William Harris, as he himself said, made him familiar with literature, art and art history, and this fostered, and even certainly re-oriented his clinical insights. But it was born out of the consulting-room, has matured in decades of concrete clinical observation, and its great significance is clinical, I think.
JSM: So how do you deal with this first obstacle?
CSL: I draw their attention to what appears to be significant signs of aesthetic experiences emerging in the material they bring, and try to see with them how these pieces of evidence speak of the evolution of the transference. By doing this, their attention to the evolution of their own counter-transference is naturally raised, I think, and it some times it too speaks of it. This often comes as a revelation for the therapist. Aesthetic experiences are still not valued enough in the course of analysis – of our own analysis. So we usually don't have the experience of having had our attention drawn to our own aesthetic experiences. This parallels the problem I have pointed out to you about the primary difficulties in bringing the claustrum theory to them. You don't find these things in your own analysis and so it makes things a bit difficult.
JSM: Meltzer's aesthetic conflict is of course centred on the way the foetus and the infant experience the mother. The figure of the father seems to run mostly behind the curtain. Do they somehow react to this?
CSL: Yes! An interesting and surprising aspect of the group's response was precisely that they asked me to deal with the father figure in the child's early development. It's true… the figure of the father remains
mostly in the shadow, such is Meltzer's fascination for the mother, for her inside as the model of the world. But we find very interesting references in his The Apprehension of Beauty to the father's presence in the mother-infant's relationship.
JSM: And how did they generally respond to the seminars on the theory of aesthetic conflict?
CSL: In the last seminar that ended the previous academic year of the post-graduate course in child analysis I asked the group to bring anything that would reflect an aesthetic experience of their own. They reported aesthetic experiences from many different sources: personal, clinical and cultural. This seminar was filled entirely with this material. And it was quite surprising to see the growing emotional climate in the room as the seminar went on. It was a moving experience that I think surprised everyone. Their responses to this proposal gave me the confidence that it may perhaps have raised their awareness for the importance of aesthetic experiences – of their own as well as their patients'.
JSM: How important do you think child analysis is for training? For this too is such a key curricular question in Meltzer's way of thinking, as you know.
CSL: I think it's indispensable to have some training in child analysis. In the Institute of Psychoanalysis, child analysis is an integral part of the curriculum of psychoanalytic training. I always concentrate on these seminars. The Institute has even recently created a three-year post-graduate course in child analysis. You can hardly understand the infantile parts of the personality of adults in the same way whether or not you have some familiarity with children in the consulting-room. Most of the emotional conflict we meet every day in adults in the consulting-room have of course their roots in their early emotional life. And this too is why ‘Little Hans’, ‘Dick’, ‘Barry’ and ‘Richard’ are so important.
JSM: As the years went on, Meltzer's way of teaching has changed; his attitude, even in supervising, has changed. I would like to hear your feelings about this.
CSL: It did change, yes!… Meltzer's passion and fascination for mental life, together with his sense of kindness taken in the complex meaning I have pointed out before have matured over the years into a sense of sweetness and of even deeper understanding, which ripened as tolerance, I was unable to recognize in him in the first years of my studying with him. You could feel it in the sessions with him… His emphasis on interpretation has gradually been replaced by the importance he gave to describing what he believed he was seeing in the material. But his way of describing it has itself ripened more into a way of raising questions than a way of dictating his thoughts. It became closer to doubt than to certainty; to kindly respect the patient's thinking rather than to knowing what it means. This speaks of how his marvellous way of listening has also matured over the years. And this really changed the quality of his presence in the room, I felt.