Donald Meltzer was a distinguished psychoanalyst and one of Klein's most productive and prominent analysands. He was a very influential teacher internationally and an extraordinary practitioner and theorist as well. He codified Kleinian technique, was innovative in the treatment of autistic children, and was the foremost metapsychologist for Klein's and Bion's works. Of his many outstanding contributions, The Apprehension of Beauty, which he co-authored with Meg Harris Williams, heralded a new age in psychoanalysis by providing its aesthetic perspective in relation to that of infant development.



Donald Meltzer (1923-2004) was born in New York and studied medicine at Yale. After practising as a psychiatrist specialising in children and families, he moved to England to have analysis with Melanie Klein in the 1950s, and for some years was a training analyst with the British Society. He worked with both adults and children, and was innovative in the treatment of autistic children; in the treatment of children he worked closely with Esther Bick and Martha Harris whom he later married. He taught child psychiatry and psychoanalytic history at the Tavistock Clinic. He also took a special scholarly interest in art and aesthetics, based on a lifelong love of art. Meltzer taught widely and regularly in many countries, in Europe, Scandinavia, and North and South America, and his books have been published in many languages and continue to be increasingly influential in the teaching of psychoanalysis. His first book, The Psychoanalytical Process, was published by Heinemann in 1967 and was received with some suspicion (like all his books) by the psychoanalytic establishment. Subsequent books were published by Clunie Press for the Roland Harris Educational Trust which he set up together with Martha Harris (now the Harris Meltzer Trust). The Process was followed by Sexual States of Mind in 1973, Explorations in Autism in 1975; The Kleinian Development in 1978 (his lectures on Freud, Klein and Bion given to students at the Tavistock); Dream Life in 1984; The Apprehension of Beauty in 1988 (with Meg Harris Williams); and The Claustrum in 1992. Martha Harris (1919-1987) read English at University College London and then Psychology at Oxford. She taught in a Froebel Teacher Training College and was trained as a Psychologist at Guys Hospital, as a Child Psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic, where she was for many years responsible for the child psychotherapy training in the department of Children and Families, and as a Psychoanalyst at the British Institute of Psychoanalysis. Together with her first husband Roland Harris (a teacher) she started a pioneering schools counselling service. With her second husband Donald Meltzer she wrote a psychoanalytical model of The Child in the Family in the Community for multidisciplinary use in schools and therapeutic units. || Meg Harris Williams, a writer and artist, studied English at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and art at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, and has had a lifelong psychoanalytic education, working closely with Donald Meltzer. She has written and lectured extensively in the UK and abroad on psychoanalysis and literature. She is a visiting lecturer for AGIP and at the Tavistock Centre in London, and an Honorary Member of the Psychoanalytic Center of California. She is married with four children and lives in Farnham, Surrey.



About the contributors Foreword by Meg Harris Williams 1. Psychoanalysis as a human activity introduced by Kenneth Sanders 2. Dream Life: the generative theatre of meaning introduced by Miriam Botbol 3.Temperature and distance introduced by Neil Maizels 4. A psychoanalytical model of the child-in-thefamily-in-the-community introduced by Martina Campart 5. Money-Kyrle's concept of misconception introduced by Lars Thorgaard and Jon Morgan Stokkeland 6. The delusion of clarity of insight introduced by Tomas Plankers 7. Tyranny introduced by Irene Freeden 8. Dimensionality, adhesive identification, splitting introduced by Renata Li Causi 9. The impact of Bion's ideas introduced by Meg Harris Williams 10. Aesthetic conflict introduced by Lennart Ramberg 11. On Bion's Grid-later thoughts introduced by Robert Oelsner 12. Sign, symbol and allegory introduced by Grete Tangen Andersen, Morten Andersen, Trond Holm, Jon Morgan Stokkeland, Lilian Stokkeland, Eirik Tjessem 13. Some personal statements On his analysis with Melanie Klein Invention and discovery The thinking breast Religion and psychoanalysis The principles of child psychotherapy training The nature of supervision Countertransference and "showing it" Observation and counterdreaming Good luck Meltzer's books and concepts References Index