Sincerity and Other Works

Donald Meltzer (1923-2004) is widely known as a psychoanalyst and teacher throughout Europe and South America. He is the author of many works on psychoanalytic theory and practice, including 'The Psychoanalytical Process', 'Sexual States of Mind', 'Explorations in Autism', 'The Kleinian Development', 'Dream Life', 'Studies in Extended Metapsychology', and 'The Claustrum', all published by Karnac Books. Alberto Hahn is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Society and works in a private practice in London. He also teaches psychoanalysis at the Tavistock Clinic, and lectures abroad. He is the translator into English of the 'Introduction to the Works of Bion' and the editor of ' Sincerity and Other Works: Collected Papers of Donald Meltzer'. He has written a number of clinical and theoretical papers, among them 'Observation and Intuition in the Psychoanalytic Situation', 'On Complaining', 'The Nature of the "Object" in the Claustrum', and 'Ways of Thinking about Adolescent Psychopathology'.

• Editor’s Introduction -- Author’s Preface -- Towards a structural concept of anxiety (1955) -- Note on a transient inhibition of chewing (1959) -- Lectures and seminars in Kleinian child psychiatry in collaboration with Esther Bick (1960) -- A contribution to the metapsychology of cyclothymic states (1963) -- The differentiation of somatic delusions from hypochondria (1963) -- The dual unconscious basis of materialism (1965) -- Return to the imperative: an ethical implication of psychoanalytic findings (1965) -- An interruption technique for the analytic impasse (1968) -- A note on analytic receptivity (1968) -- The relation of aims to methodology in the treatment of children (1968) -- Positive and negative forms (1970) -- Sincerity: a study in the atmosphere of human relations (1971) -- Towards an atelier system (1971) -- Routine and inspired interpretations: their relation to the weaning process in analysis (1973) -- Repression, forgetting, and unfaithfulness (1974) -- Narcissistic foundation of the erotic transference (1974) -- The role of pregential confusions in erotomania (1974) -- Adhesive identification (1974) -- Compulsive generosity (1975) -- The role of narcissistic organization in the communication difficulties of the schizophrenic (1975) -- Temperature and distance as technical dimensions of interpretation (1976) -- A psychoanalytic model of the child-in-the-family-in-the-community with Martha Harris (1976) -- Impressions concerning adolescent confusional states (1977) -- A note on introjective processes (1978) -- "The diameter of the circle" in Wilfred Bion’s work (1980) -- The relation of splitting of attention to splitting of self and objects (1981) -- Ego ideal functions and the psychoanalytic process with Mauro Mancia (1981) -- Does Money-Kyrle’s concept of misconception have any unique descriptive power? (1981) -- Models of dependence (1981) -- Three lectures on W. R. Bion’s A Memoir of the Future with Meg Harris Williams (1985) -- The psychoanalytic process: twenty years on, the setting of the analytic encounter and the gathering of the transference (1986) -- Concerning the distinction between conflicts of desire and paradoxes of thought (1987) -- Concerning the stupidity of evil (1988) -- Narcissism and violence in adolescents (1989)

'It is very difficult to do justice to a book of this kind, some six hundred pages long, comprising thirty four papers written during the last forty years. (It) thus offers an exceptional survey of the whole of a scientific life, showing us the evolution of the thought of an analyst who was a particularly prolific author. We should, in my opinion, be very grateful to Donald Meltzer for his magnificent oeuvre and for the hard work to which it bears witness, which is reflected with great authenticity (or sincerity) in this book.'- Jean Begoin, International journal of Psychoanalysis'Alberto Hahn has put together a wonderful collection of papers.and he has edited with grace.'- Eric Rhode, British Journal of Psychotherapy'The important problems of psychoanalytic theory and technique are displayed for the reader in an elegant and concise style, where thoughts are rooted in clinical experience and return to it fertilized by a permanently renewed metapsychology.Meltzer will leave everlasting impressions in the future of psychoanalysis.'- R. Horatio Etchegoyen'Donald Meltzer's innovative mind and wealth of teaching experience come across on every page of this collection of papers.'- Anton Obholzer'What seems to shine through this collection of papers is a steadfast hope that human beings, as individuals in families and as political collectives, can face and overcome the infantile rage and omnipotent defenses which are the legacies of our phylogenetic and developmental vulnerabilities, and institute instead a capacity, however precarious and prone to distortion and corruption as it may be, for love, decency, and the appreciation of truth and beauty. Meltzer, to an even greater extent than Klein or Bion, seems to me to have seen psychoanalysis as a profoundly passionate and frighteningly moral enterprise.'- Edwin Harari, Australian Journal of Psychotherapy