The Psycho-Analytical Process

Meltzer's first book describes what he called the natural history of a psychoanalysis, the characteristic order of phases through which an analysis moves. It is modelled on the analysis of children in the playroom and then extended to adults, and it draws on Klein's account of projective identification and the inner world. The process runs from the gathering of the transference, through the sorting out of geographical confusions between inside and outside, self and object, which massive projective identification produces, and then of zonal confusions, to the threshold of the depressive position and the weaning process. The book separates the pre-formed transference from the transference proper and shows how the cycle of the whole process recurs within a single session. A second part turns to the analyst's task: the process with adult patients, the analytic work and psychoanalysis as a human activity. Its present publisher sees in it the seeds of Meltzer's later model of the mind, including the aesthetic quality of the analytic process.