'Few people would be better qualified than the author to write this innovative and eagerly anticipated post-Kleinian book. Deeply versed in the opus of Bion and Meltzer, the author enhances the concept of "catastrophic change". The analyst who "eschews memory and desire" observes the subtle interplay of transference and countertransference (Meltzer's "counter dreaming") as it works through aesthetic conflicts. The ensuing reciprocity of the patients and analysts unconscious is revealed as the aesthetical and ethical basis of psychoanalysis. In that sense the psychoanalytical process parallels that of poetic and artistic inspiration. They are all generated by creative internal objects. Harris Williams' intellectual tour de force demonstrates convincingly the human capacity for symbolic thinking that underlies literary, artistic and psychoanalytic creativity. Her encyclopaedic understanding of literature, art and psychoanalysis contributes to this book's virtuosity.'- Irene Freeden, Senior Member of the British Association of Psychotherapists

In this intelligent and insightful work, Meg Harris Williams presents a clear and readable introduction to the works of influential psychoanalyst Donald Meltzer. The book covers Meltzer's ideas on key themes including sexuality, dreams, psychosis, perversion and aesthetics, and his work with both children and adults. This book focuses especially on Meltzer's views on the nature of psychoanalysis itself, as an investigative method conducted by the cooperation between two people. His intuitive understanding of dreams is underscored by a scholarly interest in philosophy and linguistics. The book will give readers a window into Meltzer's clinical seminars and supervisions, as well as a comprehensive overview of his published work, all thoughtfully brought together by someone who worked with Meltzer for many years. Bringing Meltzer's ideas into contemporary context, this fresh approach to his work makes his rich and complex theories about our inner world accessible to all. Part of the Routledge Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis series, this book will be of great importance to psychoanalysts, clinicians and scholars familiar with Meltzer's ideas, as well as those seeking an introduction to his work.

This book takes a new approach to Shakespeare's plays, exploring them as dream-thought in the modern psychoanalytic sense of unconscious thinking. Through his commitment to poetic language, Shakespeare offers images and dramatic sequences that illustrate fundamental developmental conflicts, the solutions for which are not preconceived but evolve through the process of dramatisation. In this volume, Meg Harris Williams explores the fundamental distinction between the surface meanings of plot or argument and the deep grammar of dreamlife, applied not only to those plays known as 'dream-plays' but also to critical sequences throughout Shakespeare's oeuvre. Through a post-Kleinian model based on the thinking of Bion, Meltzer, and Money-Kyrle, this book sheds new light on both Shakespeare's own relation to the play and on the identificatory processes of the playwright, reader, or audience. Dream Sequences in Shakespeare is important reading for psychoanalysts, playwrights, and students.

This book takes a new approach to Shakespeare’s plays, exploring them as dream-thought in the modern psychoanalytic sense of unconscious thinking. Through his commitment to poetic language, Shakespeare offers images and dramatic sequences that illustrate fundamental developmental conflicts, the solutions for which are not preconceived but evolve through the process of dramatisation. In this volume, Meg Harris Williams explores the fundamental distinction between the surface meanings of plot or argument and the deep grammar of dreamlife, applied not only to those plays known as ‘dream-plays’ but also to critical sequences throughout Shakespeare’s oeuvre. Through a post-Kleinian model based on the thinking of Bion, Meltzer, and Money-Kyrle, this book sheds new light on both Shakespeare’s own relation to the play and on the identificatory processes of the playwright, reader, or audience. Dream Sequences in Shakespeare is important reading for psychoanalysts, playwrights, and students.

In this intelligent and insightful work, Meg Harris Williams presents a clear and readable introduction to the works of influential psychoanalyst Donald Meltzer. The book covers Meltzer's ideas on key themes including sexuality, dreams, psychosis, perversion and aesthetics, and his work with both children and adults. This book focuses especially on Meltzer's views on the nature of psychoanalysis itself, as an investigative method conducted by the cooperation between two people. His intuitive understanding of dreams is underscored by a scholarly interest in philosophy and linguistics. The book will give readers a window into Meltzer's clinical seminars and supervisions, as well as a comprehensive overview of his published work, all thoughtfully brought together by someone who worked with Meltzer for many years. Bringing Meltzer's ideas into contemporary context, this fresh approach to his work makes his rich and complex theories about our inner world accessible to all. Part of the Routledge Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis series, this book will be of great importance to psychoanalysts, clinicians and scholars familiar with Meltzer's ideas, as well as those seeking an introduction to his work.

Literature is recognised as having significantly influenced the development of modern psychoanalytic thought. In recent years psychoanalysis has drawn increasingly on the literary and artistic traditions of western culture and moved away from its original medical scientific context. Originally published in 1991 The Chamber of Maiden Thought (Keats's metaphor for 'the awakening of the thinking principle') is an original and revealing exploration of the seminal role of literature in forming the modern psychoanalytic model of the mind.
The crux of the 'post-Kleinian' psychoanalytic view of personality development lies in the internal relations between the self and the mind's 'objects'. Meg Harris Williams and Margot Waddell show that these relations have their origins in the drama of identifications which we can see played out metaphorically and figuratively in literature, which presents the self-creative process in aesthetic terms. They argue that psychoanalysis is a true child of literature rather than merely the interpreter or explainer of literature, illustrating this with some examples from clinical experience, but drawing above all on close scrutiny of the dynamic mental processes presented in the work of Shakespeare, Milton, the Romantic poets, Emily Bronte and George Eliot.
The Chamber of Maiden Thought will encourage psychoanalytic workers to respond to the influence of literature in exploring symbolic mental processes. By bringing psychoanalysis into creative conjunction with the arts, it enables practitioners to tap a cultural potential whose insights into the human mind are of immense value."

This book offers a definitive reading of Bion's remarkable autobiographical writings from a perspective embedded in the poetry of the ages, that of the Romantics in particular. It is at once learned and, utterly freshly, able to explore the inside story of Bion's life and mind. The volume is a distillation and elaboration of the work of many years. Whilst ostensibly an extended commentary on the autobiographical works themselves, it is also, in its own right, a tour de force, engaging, as it does, with the heart of the matter: with the development of a psychoanalyst, of a life, a self, a mind, thoroughly inward with the "dark and sombre world of thought".'- Margot Waddell, psychoanalyst and consultant child psychotherapist, Tavistock Clinic

The post-Kleinian model of the mind, as developed by W. R. Bion and Donald Meltzer, is essentially an aesthetic one. It is founded on Melanie Klein's discovery of the "internal object" with its combined masculine and feminine qualities and ambiguous, awe-inspiring nature. Turbulent emotional experiences are repeatedly transformed through symbol-formation, on the basis of the internal relationship between the infant self and its object; and the aesthetic containment provided by this "counter-transference dream" (as Meltzer put it) enables the mind to digest its conflicts and develop.This search for a pattern that can make "contrary" emotions thinkable is modelled by all art forms and accounts for their universal significance. It is a process that can be observed particularly clearly in literature, in the form of the romance between the poet and his Muse (the traditional formulation of the psycho-analytic internal object).

Few people would be better qualified than the author to write this innovative and eagerly anticipated post-Kleinian book. Deeply versed in the opus of Bion and Meltzer, the author enhances the concept of "catastrophic change". The analyst who "eschews memory and desire" observes the subtle interplay of transference and countertransference (Meltzer's "counter dreaming") as it works through aesthetic conflicts. The ensuing reciprocity of the patients and analysts unconscious is revealed as the aesthetical and ethical basis of psychoanalysis. In that sense the psychoanalytical process parallels that of poetic and artistic inspiration. They are all generated by creative internal objects. Harris Williams' intellectual tour de force demonstrates convincingly the human capacity for symbolic thinking that underlies literary, artistic and psychoanalytic creativity. Her encyclopaedic understanding of literature, art and psychoanalysis contributes to this book's virtuosity.'- Irene Freeden, Senior Member of the British Association of Psychotherapists

Literature is recognised as having significantly influenced the development of modern psychoanalytic thought. In recent years psychoanalysis has drawn increasingly on the literary and artistic traditions of western culture and moved away from its original medical-scientific context. Originally published in 1991 The Chamber of Maiden Thought (Keats's metaphor for 'the awakening of the thinking principle') is an original and revealing exploration of the seminal role of literature in forming the modern psychoanalytic model of the mind. The crux of the 'post-Kleinian' psychoanalytic view of personality development lies in the internal relations between the self and the mind's 'objects'. Meg Harris Williams and Margot Waddell show that these relations have their origins in the drama of identifications which we can see played out metaphorically and figuratively in literature, which presents the self-creative process in aesthetic terms. They argue that psychoanalysis is a true child of literature rather than merely the interpreter or explainer of literature, illustrating this with some examples from clinical experience, but drawing above all on close scrutiny of the dynamic mental processes presented in the work of Shakespeare, Milton, the Romantic poets, Emily Bronte and George Eliot. The Chamber of Maiden Thought will encourage psychoanalytic workers to respond to the influence of literature in exploring symbolic mental processes. By bringing psychoanalysis into creative conjunction with the arts, it enables practitioners to tap a cultural potential whose insights into the human mind are of immense value.

"This book offers a definitive reading of Bion's remarkable autobiographical writings from a perspective embedded in the poetry of the ages, that of the Romantics in particular. It is at once learned and, utterly freshly, able to explore the inside story of Bion's life and mind. The volume is a distillation and elaboration of the work of many years. Whilst ostensibly an extended commentary on the autobiographical works themselves, it is also, in its own right, a tour de force, engaging, as it does, with the heart of the matter: with the development of a psychoanalyst, of a life, a self, a mind, thoroughly inward with the 'dark and sombre world of thought'."- Margot Waddell, psychoanalyst and consultant child psychotherapist, Tavistock Clinic

"The Vale of Soul-Making" promises to become the text for post-Kleinian thought.. and the upshot of it all is to establish Mrs Klein as the first 'post-Kleinian'."-- Donald MeltzerPoets have always seen themselves as inspired by their Muse. In this book this is taken literally, not just metaphorically, to be a faithful description of an internal identification with a teaching object or deity that governs the adventure of writing the poem. The central concern of the book is therefore the relationship of each individual poet with his Muse, as worked out "on the pulses" through the expressive qualities of poetic language. The awesome qualities of the internal Muse were discovered by Melanie Klein in the "combined object," and developed into a theory of knowledge by Wilfred Bion and Donald Meltzer, who have shown how "learning from experience" occurs by repeatedly confronting the aesthetic conflict evoked by the internal object at points of "catastrophic change" in mental evolution.The impelling nature of the quest for knowledge of the inner world prompted Keats to describe the world as a "vale of soul-making," teeming with opportunities for mental growth under the guidance of internal "mediators." The self-analysis of Keats and other poets by incorporating poetic qualities into their own evolving Muse provides a fascinating model of development through "influence" in a way that illuminates the complexity of identification in psychoanalysis, a process at whose core Meltzer locates the "counter-transference dream."

The Art of Personality is a diverse selection of talks and papers on psychoanalysis and literature given by the author over the past ten years. They elaborate on the goal expressed by Milton as 'becoming a true poem': that is, seeing parallels between the gradual construction of the personality and the construction of a work of art, following an internal evolution on the lines of Bion's description of an 'endoskeletonous personality'. The works discussed range from classic Greek drama to Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Patrick White. The author's thoughts on our interaction with literature stand alongside those of Adrian Stokes and Richard Wollheim on understanding paintings. She brings together a broad knowledge of ancient and modern writings with a deep understanding of the creatively imaginative mind, illuminated by post-Kleinian psychoanalysis. This book will be a source of pleasure and inspiration both to general lovers of literature and to psychoanalytic workers who value the poetic aspects of their patients and their own forms of expression.'

This tract was commissioned from Donald Meltzer and Martha Harris in 1976 by the Organisation for Economic and Cultural Development as part of a project to develop policies and programmes that would support families in their educational task. It was included in Sincerity: Collected Papers of Donald Meltzer ed. A. Hahn (1994) but has never until now been published as an independent work in English, though it has been published in French, Spanish and Italian and has had extensive use in those countries by therapists, teachers, teacher-trainers and social workers.It is a unique work owing to its integration of a psychoanalytical theory of learning with an ecological conception of how the various systems involved in the educational process are interconnected, and as such is still of great present-day relevance, both to clinical and educational practitioners and to policy-makers.

This book is one of a short series on the teaching of post-Kleinian psychoanalysis, with a companion volume on Teaching Meltzer. Wilfred Bion always emphasised that he had no desire to implant his thoughts in others but hoped instead to inspire their own process of self-knowledge or 'becoming', which can only take place in the conviction that the mind 'exists' and is not merely a figure of speech. He spoke of 'intercessors' and cited one of his own teachers, Socrates, on the need to distinguish phantoms from real thoughts, intelligence from wisdom.Like psychoanalysis itself, teaching is a form of learning from experience, conducted in the context of a joint search with students or colleagues, or indeed patients. A good teacher is essentially a student, and 'What are you when you cease to be a student of psychoanalysis?" as Bion said. Teaching the work of one's teachers can be an especially fruitful means of internalising them, and an invitation to others.The contributions in this book are international and varied in their approach, and have been worked out over time, so offer an opportunity for current and future teachers to experiment and analyse their own methods. Style, cultural context, personal bias and interests are all important in making the teaching situation a live and authentic one from which the participants, and likewise the reader, can select what speaks to them.