The Tavistock Model: Papers on Child Development and Psychoanalytic Training (Psychology, Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy) - Softcover

9781780490090: The Tavistock Model: Papers on Child Development and Psychoanalytic Training (Psychology, Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780490097 ISBN 13: 9781780490090

Publisher: Karnac Books, 2011

Includes papers from two pioneering child analysts, presented in four sections: Clinical Papers on the Psychoanalysis of Children and Adults; Papers on Child Development and the Family; Papers on Infant Observation; Papers on Training in Child Psychotherapy and Psycho-analysis.

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About the Author

Meg Harris Williams is an artist and writer with a special interest in aesthetic experience. She collaborated with Donald Meltzer in The Apprehension of Beauty and The Claustrum. Her latest books on psychoanalysis and poetry are The Vale of Soulmaking and The Aesthetic Development.

Review

"This is a new edition of Mattie Harris’s papers together with two of Mrs Bick’s. The papers span 16 years of development. They illustrate the conviction that detailed observation, especially as taught by Mrs Bick, is the basis of learning about emotional life. Thus the first few papers, while ostensibly describing the training of a child psychotherapist, are actually a guideline for learning about one’s own emotional experience and hence of becoming a person. Mattie was very much inspired by Melanie Klein’s teaching but was aware of the basic assumption groupings that arise, both internally and externally, through idealization of a great figure and which are death to individual thinking. Bion was an especial influence on her, particularly his idea of learning from the experience of tolerating frustration, and eschewing memory and desire in order to focus on the present moment. The majority of her papers link experiences of infant observation with descriptions of analysis of child or adult cases. Each paper describes new aspects of the experience required for the development of an alive character. They are written in the concise, even-handed style of Mattie’s personality and show her intense interest in the details that make each of us unique." (Joan Symington, child psychiatrist and training analyst, Australian Psychoanalytical Society)

"If ever anyone had 'greatness thrust upon them', it was the reluctant Mattie at the time when Mrs Bick left the [Tavistock] Clinic and it was up to Mattie to either take over or to let the infant Child Psychotherapy course fade away." (Donald Meltzer, Psychoanalyst)

“A sentence of Bion's that Martha Harris often paraphrased was that we should not worry so much about our inhibitions, but about our proclivity to inhibit others. Many chapters in this book put across most vividly Martha Harris’ enabling talent, both in her teaching and in her clinical work.” (Gianna Polacco Williams, Psychoanalyst; honorary child and adolescent psychotherapist)

From a review of the original edition:
“[Harris’s] readers will have the experience of sharing in the thinking and work of a highly original and creative individual who frequently delights and astonishes the reader by combinations of simplicity and profundity. Her writings vividly convey the analytic experience with its excitements, tedium, bafflement and enlightenment.” (Shirley Hoxter)

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