At this December's meeting of The American, the British analyst Betty Joseph will deliver the plenary presentation. Miss Joseph, widely sought out as a training and supervising analyst, is noted also as a teacher of child and adult psychoanalysis. Qualified as an analyst in 1950, she has since become a significant figure in psychoanalysis, both in Britain and internationally. She has lectured and conducted clinical training in Italy and Spain, and has traveled to Switzerland, Scandinavia, India, South America, and Israel to conduct seminars and deliver papers. Many analysts from these countries have come to London to study with her, some flying in on a regular basis for supervision.
Her best-known papers, which include “Different Types of Anxiety and Their Handling in the Clinical Situation,” “Addiction to Near Death,” “On Understanding and Not Understanding: Technical Issues,” and 'Transference: The Total Situation,“ were published in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis and have been collected in Psychic Equilibrium and Psychic Change (Routledge, 1989). The volume received a glowing review in a recent issue of JAPA. A notable recent work is a paper on ”non-resonance“ (dealing with the apparently emotionally unresponsive patient) that appeared in the festschrift for Robert Wallerstein.
Excellent as these paper are, however, they do not quite match up to Betty Joseph “live.” In person she conveys a very special experience in analytic listening and presence as she works through a detailed analysis of process material.
Along with Hanna Segal, Miss Joseph is a preeminent figure in the contemporary development of Melanie Klein's analytic contributions. Drawing also on the ideas of Wilfred Bion and Herbert Rosenfeld, she has shown how Kleinian analysis has evolved from its early years into a form that today can be appreciated and assimilated by analysts of other persuasions. Her approach typically highlights the way a particular patient affects the analyst during the hour, drawing the analyst into feeling and speaking things that confirm, or participate in, the patient's expectations and fears. The approach illuminates the way in which primitive phenomena—splitting, introjection, projective identification—operate in the hour-to-hour work of psychoanalysis with all patients, not only the most disturbed.
Over the last decade, interest in her work has greatly increased in the U.S. During this period she has been the guest of several of The American's societies, giving scientific papers and conducting clinical seminars. She has given a two-day clinical seminar at IPTAR and has been the featured speaker at the Spring Meeting of Division 39.
Rita V. Frankiel, Ph.D., is a training and supervising analyst at the New York Freudian Society.