Ebook: A Meltzer Reader

Donald Meltzer was a distinguished psychoanalyst and one of Klein’s most productive and prominent prodigies. He was a very influential teacher internationally and an extraordinary practitioner and theorist as well. He codified Kleinian technique, was innovative in the treatment of autistic children, and was the foremost metapsychologist for Klein’s and Bion’s works.

This selection from the writings of Donald Meltzer offers new readers a personal sampling of his ideas, and serves as a companion guide to those already familiar with his work. Each chapter is prefaced by an introduction written by one of his many former students and colleagues.

The book introduces to readers the scope and nature of Meltzer’s contribution, and suggests the wider social context in which he saw psychoanalysis. He believed it could contribute to nurturing the “lost children of the personality” and thereby the world in general – provided its practitioners could themselves discard its institutional tyrannies and instead, latch on to “the spirit of it”.