Exploring the Work of Donald Meltzer

Donald Meltzer (1923-2004) is widely known as a psychoanalyst and teacher throughout Europe and South America. He is the author of many works on psychoanalytic theory and practice, including 'The Psychoanalytical Process', 'Sexual States of Mind', 'Explorations in Autism', 'The Kleinian Development', 'Dream Life', 'Studies in Extended Metapsychology', and 'The Claustrum', all published by Karnac Books. Margaret Cohen a child and adult psychotherapist in private practice in London. She worked in the Department of Psychological Medicine at Great Ormond Street and then in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit and Paediatric Oncology at The Whittington Hospital, London. She has written about prematurity among other subjects and has taught at The Tavistock Clinic, The Anna Freud Clinic and in Italy. Alberto Hahn is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Society and works in a private practice in London. He also teaches psychoanalysis at the Tavistock Clinic, and lectures abroad. He is the translator into English of the 'Introduction to the Works of Bion' and the editor of ' Sincerity and Other Works: Collected Papers of Donald Meltzer'. He has written a number of clinical and theoretical papers, among them 'Observation and Intuition in the Psychoanalytic Situation', 'On Complaining', 'The Nature of the "Object" in the Claustrum', and 'Ways of Thinking about Adolescent Psychopathology'.

This book is a tribute to Donald Melzer's extraordinary contribution to psychoanalysis. It includes many of the papers given at the Tavistock Centre in London to celebrate Meltzer's 75th Birthday. Among the contributions, Margaret Rustin and Michael Rustin write on the work of Samuel Beckett; Gianna Williams elaborates upon Meltzer's thinking about the meeting of mother and baby; Didier Houzel discusses the aesthetic conflict and its connection with beauty and violence; and the Psychoanalytic Group of Barcelona describe their experience in working with Meltzer as a visiting supervisor. There are also several papers discussing the clinical relevance of Meltzer's thinking, particularly in work with children and adolescents.Apart from these papers, the book also contains a candid review by Meltzer of his own writing and thinking. This book provides a unique set of perspectives on his work and influence, and the sheer diversity of fields in which his thinking is now being used. It will surely be of continuing value to anyone interested in the state of psychoanalysis

• Introduction , A review of my writings , Experiences of learning with Donald Meltzer , Development is beauty, growth is ethics , The beauty and the violence of love , Keats’s “Ode to Psyche” , “Song-and-dance” and its developments: the function of rhythm in the learning process of oral and written language , Clinical notes on the organizing function of time during puberty , The light meter, the thermostat, the tuner: the compositional aspects of communication with very disturbed adolescents , Love and destructivity: from the aesthetic conflict to a revision of the concept of destructivity in the psyche , Reflections on “aesthetic reciprocity” , Beckett: dramas of psychic catastrophe , Living in intrusive identification , Reading Donald Meltzer: identification and intercourse as modes of reading and relating , A learning experience in psychoanalysis