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