Enabling and Inspiring: A Tribute to Martha Harris(The Harris Meltzer Trust Series)

Martha Harris (1919-1987) was one of the most influential and also one of the most loved psychoanalysts of the generation that trained with Melanie Klein. She also worked with Wilfred Bion, and wrote many books and papers on psychoanalytic training and child development. Her colleague James Gammill cites Mrs Klein as saying: "She is one of the best people I have ever known for the psychoanalysis of children ...and she has a mind of her own." Harris was responsible for the child psychotherapy training at the Tavistock Clinic from 1960 onwards, developing laterally the method founded on infant observation that had been put in place by Esther Bick. She established cross-clinic work discussion groups, a pioneering schools' counselling course (in collaboration with her husband Roland Harris), and individual work with disturbed children in the school environment. Her belief that psychoanalytic ideas could and should "travel", both geographically and across the professions, led to her seeding the "Tavi Model" in many other countries through regular teaching trips, in company with her later husband Donald Meltzer.Her influence was not as a theorist, but as a teacher with an extraordinary capacity to engage processes of introjective learning in both students and readers. This tribute by some of those who studied with her is not simply testimony to a remarkable teacher and clinician whose wisdom has been rarely equalled; it also offers inspiration to others who may be struggling to find ways of using psychoanalytic ideas imaginatively in a variety of contexts - clinical, social or scholarly - in what can at times appear to be an unreceptive world.

Table of Contents:
Preface Meg Harris Williams PART I – IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD 1. Mattie at work Gianna Polacco Williams 2. Mattie as an educator Margaret Rustin 3. Mattie’s teaching methods Ann Cebon 4. Mattie’s contribution to the study of infant observation Janine Sternberg 5. A psychoanalytic revolution from a speculative to an empirical point of view Didier Houzel 6. The role of Martha Harris from the beginning of the GERPEN James Gammill 7. Martha Harris: an indelible creative memory Carlo Brutti and Rita Parlani Brutti 8. Made in Hampstead and exported throughout the world: Germany and Austria Ross A. Lazar 9. Mattie in Bombay Sarosh Forbes 10. Turning points enabled by Martha Harris Marja Schulman 11. Growing points and the role of observation Meg Harris Williams PART II – CLINICAL WORK AND SUPERVISION 12. The experience of supervision Catrin Bradley 13. Mattie as “maternal container” for a trainee Evanthe Blandy 14. A glimpse of prenatal life Romana Negri 15. Assessment of a little girl and her parents Simona Nissim 16. Supervision of a five year old boy Andrea Watson 17. Revisiting some lessons learned from Martha Harris Dina Vallino 18. Reminiscences of an infant observation with Martha Harris Angela Goyena 19. Family consultations in the footsteps of Martha Harris with toddlers at risk of autism Maria Rhode PART III – PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 20. Shorter recollections Gabrielle Crockatt, Hélène Dubinsky, Ellen Jaffe, Judy Shuttleworth, Brian Truckle, Eleanor Wigglesworth, Ricky Emanuel, Katherine Arnold, Herbert Chaim Hahn, Carlo Papuzza, Maria Pozzi, Renata Li Causi, Torhild Leira, Eve Steel 21. Memories of Mattie Valerie Sinason 22. Mattie’s legacy Asha Phillips 23. Mattie on maternal containment Anne Alvarez 24. Baptism under fire: finding my feet as a child psychotherapist Caroline Gluckman 25. On becoming a psychotherapist Margot Waddell 26. Remembering Mattie Alessandra Piontelli 27. Personal recollections of learning from Mattie Harris Pamela Sorensen 28. Mattie’s house: a memoir Selina Sella Marsoni 29. A tribute to Mattie Patricia Kenwood Postscript: among schoolchildren Meg Harris Williams Appendix: Portrait of Mattie Donald Meltzer References Name index Subject index  

About the Author :
Maria Rhode is Professor of Child Psychotherapy at the Tavistock Clinic and the University of East London. She is co-editor of 'Psychotic States in Children' (1997), and is currently working on an early intervention project for toddlers with communication difficulties. Margaret Rustin is a consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic, London, where she has been Head of Child Psychotherapy since 1986. She has pioneered and supported the extension of training in psychoanalytic observational approaches to training across the United Kingdom and in a number of other countries. She has coauthored, with Michael Rustin, 'Narratives of Love and Loss' and 'Mirror to Nature', and has co-edited 'Closely Observed Infants', as well as 'Psychotic States in Children' and 'Assessment in Psychotherapy'. Meg Harris Williams, a writer and artist, studied English at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and art at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, and has had a lifelong psychoanalytic education. She has written and lectured extensively in the UK and abroad on psychoanalysis and literature, and teaches at the Tavistock Centre in London, and the University of Surrey. She is married with four children and lives in Farnham, Surrey.