Baby and the Bathwater

Nina Coltart was 'one of the most admired and liked psychoanalysts in Britain. For 35 years she was an active member of the British and international psychoanalytic community and she played a major role in extending the influence of analytic ideas outside that world.' (A. H. Brafman, 'Obituary: Nina Coltart', Independent, 18 August 1997)She was born in London in 1927 and passed away in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire in 1997. She read Modern Languages at Somerville College, Oxford, but went on to train as a doctor, qualifying in 1957 at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. After qualification, she worked as a psychiatrist but found more interest in her patients’ emotions and experiences than medical conditions. Thus, in 1961, she set up in private practice as a psychotherapist, concurrently training as a psychoanalyst with the British Psychoanalytical Society. She qualified in 1964 as an associate member, became a full member in 1969, and a training analyst in the Independent Group in 1971.A dynamic representative of the international psychoanalytic community, teaching and lecturing and also helping to administer various psychotherapy trainings, Dr Coltart went beyond the usual confines to bring analytic ideas to the wider world. She taught extensively for the British Society on a series of courses, especially those concerned with questions of assessment and analysability. She built up an extensive consultation and referral service, concentrating on diagnosis and assessment for analytical therapy and for psychoanalysis. From 1972 to 1982, she was Director of the London Clinic, which interviews and assesses potential training cases for students of the British Society. She was Vice-President of the British Society and Chairman of its Board and Council from 1984 to 1987. She retired in 1994.Dr Coltart published numerous papers in psychotherapy journals and three books: Slouching Towards Bethlehem… And Further Psychoanalytic Explorations (1992), How to Survive as a Psychotherapist (1993), and The Baby and the Bathwater (1996), which are all reissued by Phoenix.

Nina Coltart’s The Baby and the Bathwater is a clear water flowing gently over rocks. Her observations of a career in psychoanalysis span more than thirty years of writing, showing us how the ends of her professional development were contained in the beginnings, and showing us how this was so in detail through her wonderful prose. From the specifics of clinical histories and experiences through her long and interesting career to the chapters on spirituality and philosophy – both personal and clinical examinations of philosophy – she demonstrates the powers of a penetrating mind. Trained at Oxford, Coltart has moved both within and beyond the constraints of several traditions – medicine, psychoanalysis, Christianity, Buddhism – to give us the rarest of gifts – an independent mind. This is a book for the novice because it will give them inspiration and courage to begin, and a book for the war-weary veteran psychotherapist and psychoanalyst because it is rejuvenating. If you want a fresh wind in your therapeutic sails, read this book!

• Foreword1. The man with two mothers2. Why am I here?3. Two’s company, three’s a crowd4. Handling the transference5. A philosopher and his mind6. Blood, shit, and tears7. “And now for something completely different…”8. Buddhism and psychoanalysis revisited9. Endings10. The baby and the bathwaterReferences