Donald Meltzer (1922–2004) was a Kleinian

psychoanalyst PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might ...

whose teaching made him influential in many countries. He became known for making clinical headway with difficult childhood conditions such as

autism The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...

, and also for his theoretical innovations and developments. His focus on the role of emotionality and

aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...

in promoting

mental health Mental health encompasses emotional, psychological, and social well-being, influencing cognition, perception, and behavior. It likewise determines how an individual handles Stress (biology), stress, interpersonal relationships, and decision-maki ...

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 Wilfred Ruprecht Bion DSO (; 8 September 1897 – 8 November 1979) was an influential English psychoanalyst, who became president of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1962 to 1965. Early life and military service Bion was born in M ...

Life and work

Meltzer was born in

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City and studied medicine at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

. He practised in St. Louis as a

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...

, before moving to

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

in 1954 to have analysis with

Melanie Klein Melanie Klein (née Reizes; 30 March 1882 – 22 September 1960) was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Klein suggested t ...

. He joined the "Kleinian group", became a teaching analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society (BPS) and took on

British citizenship British nationality law prescribes the conditions under which a person is recognised as being a national of the United Kingdom. The six different classes of British nationality each have varying degrees of civil and political rights, due to the ...

. In the early 1980s disagreements about the mode of training led him to withdraw from the BPS.Meltzer, “A review of my writings”, in Cohen and Hahn (ed.) ''Exploring the work of Donald Meltzer'' (Karnac, 2000) 3 Meltzer worked with both adults and children. Initially his work with children was supervised by

Esther Bick Esther Bick, (1902–1983), born in Przemyśl, Galicia, Poland (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), was a psychologist and child and adult psychoanalyst who, with Dr. John Bowlby, established the child and adolescent psychotherapy trai ...

, who was creating a new and influential mode of psychoanalytic training at the

Tavistock Clinic The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is a specialist mental health trust based in north London. The Trust specialises in talking therapies. The education and training department caters for 2,000 students a year from the United Kin ...

based on mother-child observation and following the theories of Melanie Klein. 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 Clinic, this model of psychoanalytic psychotherapy training became established in the principal Italian cities, in

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and

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest ...

. Meltzer taught for many years at the Tavistock Clinic, and practised privately in

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

until his death. Owing to having left the BPS, his ideas remained 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. 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).

''Imago Group''

Meltzer was a member of the Kleinian Imago Group founded by the Kleinian

aesthete Aestheticism (also the Aesthetic movement) was an art movement in the late 19th century which privileged the aesthetic value of literature, music and the arts over their socio-political functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be pr ...

Adrian Stokes for discussing applied psychoanalysis. The group included among others

Richard Wollheim Richard Arthur Wollheim (5 May 1923 − 4 November 2003) was a British philosopher noted for original work on mind and emotions, especially as related to the visual arts, specifically, painting. Wollheim served as the president of the British S ...

Roger Money-Kyrle Roger Money-Kyrle was a British psychoanalyst renowned for his wide-ranging intellect interested in the ways an individual psyche relates to the wider sphere of human society. A member of the British Psycho-Analytical Society, Money-Kyrle ble ...

Marion Milner Marion Milner (1900–1998), sometimes known as Marion Blackett-Milner, was a British writer and psychoanalyst. Outside psychotherapeutic circles, she is better known by her pseudonym, Joanna Field, as a pioneer of introspective journaling. Bio ...

and

Ernst Gombrich Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich (; ; 30 March 1909 – 3 November 2001) was an Austrian-born art historian who, after settling in England in 1936, became a naturalised British citizen in 1947 and spent most of his working life in the United Ki ...

. With Stokes he wrote a dialogue “Concerning the social basis of art”. Meltzer's aesthetic interests, combined with the mother-baby model of early learning processes, 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.

Overview

Some of Meltzer's significant and widely used developments of Kleinian

object relations theory Object relations theory is a school of thought in psychoanalytic theory centered around theories of stages of ego development. Its concerns include the relation of the psyche to others in childhood and the exploration of relationships between ...

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 Projective identification is a term introduced by Melanie Klein and then widely adopted in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Projective identification may be used as a type of defense, a means of communicating, a primitive form of relationship, or a ...

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 Countertransference is defined as redirection of a psychotherapist's feelings toward a client – or, more generally, as a therapist's emotional entanglement with a client. Early formulations The phenomenon of countertransference (german: G ...

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).

The claustrum

In his final work, ''The Claustrum: An Investigation of claustrophobic phenomena'' (1988), Donald Meltzer developed a theory of claustrophobia. Meltzer offers a Kleinian/Bionian appreciation of the phenomenon of claustrophobia, arguing that the claustrum emerges as a failure of integration in early childhood development. If there occurs massive projective identification, that the child cannot sustain, its understanding both of its own corporeality, and that of others is severely impacted. It is a result of maternal failure in the reverie and leads to an incorrect construction of the internal mother. Claustrophobia in that sense "means to be imprisoned in a state of mind without getting out", it has do with being trapped in the projective identification of others

Bibliography

*''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 *''Sincerity and Other Works: Collected Papers'' (1994) ed. A. Hahn. London: Karnac For books by Meltzer translated into languages other than English, see the publishing lists of: Armando (Rome, Italy); Bollati Boringhieri (Turin, Italy); Borla (Rome, Italy), Cortina (Milan, Italy); Dunod (Paris, France); Hublot (Brittany, France); Diskord (Tübingen, Germany); Klett-Cotta (Stuttgart, Germany); Spatia (Buenos Aires, Argentina); Paradiso editores (Ciudad de México, México); Grafein (Barcelona, Spain); Kongo Shuppan (Tokyo, Japan).

As a teacher

Meltzer was well known internationally as a teacher and supervisor. He favoured an atelier-style system for the teaching and selection of candidates for psychoanalytical training, adumbrated in his paper, “Towards an atelier system”.Meltzer, “Towards an atelier system”, in ''Sincerity: Collected Papers of Donald Meltzer'' ed. Hahn (Karnac, 1994), 285–89 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: *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 Meltzer''ed. 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

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

* https://www.academia.edu/14952920/Donald_Meltzer_the_Analyst_meets_Pinocchio_the_Real_Boy_excerpt_from_the_book_Teaching_Meltzer._ {{DEFAULTSORT:Meltzer, Donald British psychoanalysts American psychotherapists American psychoanalysts Jewish psychoanalysts Analysands of Melanie Klein Object relations theorists 1922 births 2004 deaths American emigrants to the United Kingdom