The work of Wilfred Bion, by its very nature being a major step forward in the psychoanalytical model making of the mental apparatus, will undoubtably require many years for its full assimilation into the thought and practice of workers in the field. To assist this process of assimilation two types of exposition are required: to help students read Bion's work in a comprehending way; and to show the way to the clinical application of this revolutionary modification of the working mosel of the mind.



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.



Foreword Meg Harris Williams Introduction 1. Field or phase - a debate on psychoanalytical modes of thought 2. What is an emotional experience? 3. A Klein-Bion model for evaluating psychosomatic states 4. The protomental apparatus and soma-psychotic phenomena 5. The conceptual distinction between projective identification (Klein) and container-contained (Bion) 6. Clinical use of the concept of vertices: multiplication of vertices as a method reality of testing shifting of vertices as a mode of defence 7. The limits of language 8. Facts and fictions 9. An enquiry into lies, their genesis and relation to hallucination 10. Clinical application of Bion's concept 'transformations in hallucinosis' 11. Clinical application of Bion's concept 'reversal of alpha-function' 12. Psychotic illness in early childhood: ten years on from Explorations in Autism 13. A one-year-old goes to day nursery - a parable of confusing times 14. Family patterns and cultural educability 15. Concerning the perception of one's own attributes and its relation to language development 16. On turbulence 17. A Swiftean diatribe 18. Denouement References Index