The Tavistock Model: Collected Papers of Martha Harris and Esther Bick
Part of The Harris Meltzer Trust series - more in this series
Book Details
- Publisher : Harris Meltzer Trust
- Published : September 2018
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 432
- Category :
Child and Adolescent Studies - Category 2 :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 93820
- ISBN 13 : 9781912567362
- ISBN 10 : 1912567369
Also by Martha Harris
Also by Meg Harris Williams
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This is a revised and expanded edition of the collected papers of Martha Harris and Esther Bick on child development, infant observation and psychoanalytic training, including some not in previous editions. These papers from their clinical, observational and educational perspectives, form the basis for what has become known worldwide as the ‘Tavistock Model’ of educating child psychotherapists: a model which also enriches psychoanalysis with adults. The collection includes appendices by Ann Cebon and Margaret Rustin and on the genesis of the Schools’ Counsellors’ Course developed at the Tavistock by Roland and Martha Harris.
Reviews and Endorsements
‘Martha Harris is one of the most gifted people for child analysis.’
Melanie Klein (personal recollection by James Gammill)
‘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… The central conviction, later hallowed in Bion’s concept of “learning from experience”, was that the kind of learning which transformed a person into a professional worker had to be rooted in the intimate relations with inspired teachers, living and dead, present and in books.’
Donald Meltzer, psychoanalyst
‘Mattie’s own courage and devotion and happiness in the work underpinned a colossal determination not to be hampered by a weight of bureaucratized organization and the traditionalist assumptions of most psychoanalytic educators … In retrospect, this shift of gear takes one’s breath away.’
Margaret Rustin, child and adult psychotherapist, former Head of Child Psychotherapy at the Tavistock Clinic
‘[Mattie’s] inclusiveness of attention enabled her to be an outstanding therapist, permeated her teaching, and comes across clearly in her writings.’
Shirley Hoxter, former Senior Tutor at the Tavistock Clinic (from the first edition)
‘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
‘A sentence of Bion’s that Martha Harris often paraphrased was that we should not worry so much about our inhibitions as about our proclivity to inhibit others. Her writing shows most vividly how she could enable talent in both her teaching and her clinical work.’
Gianna Polacco Williams, psychoanalyst, former organising tutor of the Observation course at the Tavistock Clinic
About the Author(s)
Martha Harris (1919-1987) read English at University College London and then Psychology at Oxford. She taught in a Froebel Teacher Training College and was trained as a Psychologist at Guys Hospital, as a Child Psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic, where she was for many years responsible for the child psychotherapy training in the department of Children and Families, and as a Psychoanalyst at the British Institute of Psychoanalysis. Together with her first husband Roland Harris (a teacher) she started a pioneering schools counselling service. With her second husband Donald Meltzer she wrote a psychoanalytical model of The Child in the Family in the Community for multidisciplinary use in schools and therapeutic units.
Esther Bick was born in Poland. She found her way to Switzerland during the Second World War, where she did her Ph.D. under Charlotte Buhler before moving to England to train as a psycho-analyst. She worked closely with Melanie Klein and initiated the Child Psychotherapy Training at the Tavistock Clinic which Martha Harris continued to nurture following her retirement.
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, working closely with Donald Meltzer. She has written and lectured extensively in the UK and abroad on psychoanalysis and literature. She is a visiting lecturer for AGIP and at the Tavistock Centre in London, and an Honorary Member of the Psychoanalytic Center of California. She is married with four children and lives in Farnham, Surrey.
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