Donald Meltzer

Donald Meltzer (1922-2004) was a Kleinian psychoanalyst whose widespread teaching made him influential in many countries. He became known for making clinical headway with difficult childhood conditions such as autism, and also for his theoretical innovations and developments.^[1] His focus on the role of emotionality and aesthetics in promoting mental health has led to his being considered a key figure in the "post-Kleinian" movement associated with the psychoanalytic theory of thinking created by Wilfred Bion.^[2]

Life and Work

Meltzer was born in New York City and studied medicine at Yale University. He practised in St. Louis as a psychiatrist, before moving to England in 1954 to have analysis with Melanie Klein. He joined the Kleinian group, became a teaching analyst of the British Society and took on British citizenship. In the early 1980s disagreements about the mode of training led him to withdraw from the Society.^[3] Meltzer worked with both adults and children. Initially his work with children was supervised by Esther Bick, who was creating a new and influential mode of psychoanalytical training at the Tavistock Institute based on mother-child observation and following the theories of Melanie Klein. ^[4] As a result of the regular travels and teaching of Meltzer and Martha Harris (his third wife), who was head of the Child Psychotherapy Training Course at the Tavistock, this model of psychoanalytic psychotherapy training became established in all the principal Italian cities, and in France and Argentina. ^[5]

Meltzer taught for many years at the Tavistock, and practised privately in Oxford (UK) until his death. Owing to having left the British Psychoanalytical Society, his ideas were controversial. He supervised psychoanalytically oriented professionals in atelier-style groups throughout Europe, Scandinavia and South America, and his visits also included New York and California.^[6] Since his death in 2004 his reputation has increasingly regained ground also in his adoptive country. Several international congresses have focussed on his work: in London (1998), Florence (2000), Buenos Aires (2005), Savona (2005), Barcelona(2005) and Stavanger, Norway (2007).^[7]

Meltzer was a member of the Kleinian Imago Group founded by the Kleinian aesthete Adrian Stokes for discussing applied psychoanalysis. The group included among others Richard Wollheim, Wilfred Bion, Roger Money-Kyrle, Marion Milner and Ernst Gombrich.[3] With Stokes he wrote a dialogue “Concerning the social basis of art”.^[8] Meltzer's aesthetic interests, combined with the mother-baby model of early learning processes,^[9]led to seeing psychoanalysis itself as an art form. His later works describe the relationship between analyst and analysand as an aesthetic process of symbol-making. This has had an influence on the philosophical view of the relation between art and psychoanalysis.^[10]

Ideas

Some of Meltzer's significant and widely used developments of Kleinian object relations theory are as follows:

the aesthetic conflict - the foundation for normal development, based on the internal mother-baby relationship, was formulated in Meltzer and Harris Williams (1988) The Apprehension of Beauty;
intrusive identification, a form of projective identification associated with life in the Claustrum (narcissistic pathology), first formulated in early seminal papers “The relation of anal masturbation to projective identification” and “The delusion of clarity of insight”, and expanded in The Claustrum (1992);
pseudo-maturity, a common clinical manifestation of arrested development;
adhesive identification and dismantling in two-dimensional autistic states, formulated in a work documenting Meltzer's experience with 5 colleagues in treating autistic children, Explorations in Autism (1975);
the preformed transference, first described in The Psychoanalytical Process (1967), referring to the patient's initial preconceptions about a psychoanalytic relationship which have to be overcome before a genuine transference and countertransference can be established;
a reappraisal of Melanie Klein’s discovery of the combined internal object, which stresses its beneficial nature as a basis for mental development, begun in Richard Week-by-Week, Part II of The Kleinian Development (1978).

For applications and comments on these theories see below, Further reading, Meltzer as teacher and External links . For expanded glossaries see Some Meltzerian Concepts and Glossary of Terms (in Spanish)

Donald Meltzer was a prolific writer and his books and many papers are translated into French, Italian, Spanish, German and some into Portuguese and Japanese.

Main publications by Meltzer

The Psychoanalytical Process (Heinemann 1967), reprinted Perthshire: Clunie Press, 1970
Sexual States of Mind (1973) Perthshire: Clunie Press
Explorations in Autism: a psychoanalytic study (1975) Perthshire: Clunie Press
with Martha Harris: A psychoanalytic model of the child-in-the-family-in-the-community (a study commissioned by the United Nations, published in French in 1976 and first published in English in Sincerity: Collected Papers of Donald Meltzer (1994).
The Kleinian Development: Book I (Freud), Book II (Klein), Book III (Bion). Single-volume edition Perthshire: Clunie Press, 1978
Dream Life: a re-examination of the psycho-analytical theory and technique (1983) Perthshire: Clunie Press
Studies in Extended Metapsychology: clinical applications of Bion’s ideas (1986) Perthshire: Clunie Press
with Meg Harris Williams: The Apprehension of Beauty: the role of aesthetic conflict in development, art and violence (1988) Perthshire: Clunie Press
The Claustrum: an investigation of claustrophobic phenomena (1992) Perthshire: Clunie Press

Meltzer as a Teacher

Meltzer was well known internationally as a teacher and supervisor.^[11] He favoured an atelier-style system for the teaching and selection of candidates for psychoanalytical training, adumbrated in his paper “Towards an atelier system”.^[12] His method was to ask supervisees to present sessions of unedited clinical material, rather than finished papers. Several of his groups and individual supervisees have documented their experiences. See the following:

Castella, R., Farre, L., Tabbia, C. (2003) Supervisions with Donald Meltzer. London: Karnac.
Emanuel, R. (2004) “A personal tribute to Donald Meltzer”, Bulletin of the Association of Child Psychotherapists 149, 11-14
Fisher, J. (2000) “Reading Donald Meltzer: identification and intercourse as modes of reading and relating”, Exploring the Work of Donald Meltzer ed. Cohen and Hahn. London: Karnac, 188-202
Hoxter, S. (2000) “Experiences of learning with Donald Meltzer”, Exploring the Work of Donald Meltzered. Cohen and Hahn. London: Karnac,12-26
Psychoanalytic Group of Barcelona (2000), “A Learning Experience”, Exploring the Work of Donald Meltzer ed. Cohen and Hahn. London: Karnac, 203-14
Psychoanalytic Group of Barcelona (2002) Psychoanalytic Work with Children and Adults. London: Karnac
Psychoanalytic Group of Barcelona (2007) De un Teller psicoanalitico, a partir de Donald Meltzer. Barcelona: Grafein (in Spanish)
Oelsner, M. and Oelsner, R. (2005) “About supervision: an interview with Donald Meltzer”, British Journal of Psychotherapy, 21 (3).
Racker Group of Venice (2004) Transfert, Adolescenza, Disturbi del Pensiero. Armando (in Italian)

References

^ See "Donald Meltzer" in French Wikipedia.
^ S. Fano Cassese (2002) Introduction to the work of Donald Meltzer (London: Karnac), xviii.
^ Meltzer, “A review of my writings”, in Cohen and Hahn (ed.) Exploring the work of Donald Meltzer (Karnac, 2000) 8; A. Hahn, obituary in International Journal of Psycho-analysis Vol. 86 (1) 175-78; another obituary
^ M. Rustin, “Dr Meltzer’s contribution to child psychotherapy”, The Bulletin of the Association of Child Psychotherapists 149, Nov 2004, 9-11; M. Harris, "The Tavistock training and philosophy", Collected Papers of Martha Harris and Esther Bick (Clunie Press, 1987); A. Sowa, “Observing the unobservable: the Tavistock Infant Observation Course and its relevance to clinical training”, Fort Da, spring 1999 Vol. 1(1). See also [http://www.answers.com/topic/bick-esther "Esther Bick"
^ R. Li Causi and M. Waddell, "An appreciation of the work of Donald Meltzer" Journal of Child Psychotherapy" Vol. 31(1) 3-5; I. Freeden, obituary, Journal of the British Association of Psychotherapists Vol. 43 (19) 88
^ See below, Meltzer as Teacher, External links, and French Wikipedia entry on Donald Meltzer
^ See also A. Hahn, "Dr Meltzer's Biography".[1]
^ In A. Stokes, Painting and the Inner World (1963), reprinted in Meltzer and Harris Williams, The Apprehension of Beauty (Clunie Press, 1988) 206-7
^ J. Begoin, “Love and destructiveness: from the aesthetic conflict to a revision of the concept of destructiveness in the psyche”, Exploring the Work of Donald Meltzer, ed. Cohen and Hahn (Karnac, 2000) 119-35; G. Williams, "Reflections on aesthetic reciprocity", ibid., 136-51
^ S. Gosso, Psychoanalysis and art: Kleinian perspectives (Karnac, 2004): N. Glover, Psychoanalytic aesthetics: the British School" [2]
^ R. D. Hinshelwood (1989) "Donald Meltzer", A Dictionary of Kleinian Thought. London: Free Association Books. Revised edition 1991
^ Meltzer, “Towards an atelier system”, in Sincerity: Collected Papers of Donald Meltzer ed. Hahn (Karnac, 1994), 285-89

External links

The Harris Meltzer Trust - includes information about Donald Meltzer and bibliographies of his work and related to his work, and an e-journal Meltzer Studies
The Meltzer Online Atelier - includes a biography of Donald Meltzer, list of works and discussion forum
Psychoanalytic Group of Barcelona-in Spanish
Racker Group of Venice-in Italian
Meltzerian Studies in Argentina-in Spanish
Portraits of the British Psychoanalysts-in French
Emotional containment and family dynamics
Psychoanalytic aesthetics: the British school
Adrian Stokes website
Forces of Nature
Donald Meltzer and the aesthetic conflict-in Italian
Benign and virulent projective identification
Autistic defences
Psychoanalytic technique with children