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The Educational Role of the Family: A Psychoanalytical Model

Authors: Donald Meltzer and Martha Harris

£8.99 – £11.99

A unique psychoanalytic perspective on family patterns and cultural educability, originally commissioned by the Organisation for Economic and Cultural Development as part of a project to develop policies and programmes that would support families in their educational task.

Authors

Donald Meltzer and Martha Harris
ISBN

9781780491400
Format

Paperback, e-Book, Print & e-Book
Page Extent

160
Publication Date

February 2013
Subject Areas

Psychoanalysis, Family Studies
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Description

A unique psychoanalytic perspective on family patterns and cultural educability, originally commissioned by the Organisation for Economic and Cultural Development as part of a project to develop policies and programmes that would support families in their educational task. The book integrates a psychoanalytical theory of learning with an ecological conception of how the various systems involved in the educational process are interconnected, and as such is still of great present-day relevance, both to clinical and educational practitioners and to policy-makers. It has been extensively used in many countries by therapists, teachers, teacher-trainers and social workers.

Contents

Contents

Foreword
Meg Harris Williams

1. The six dimensions of the mind
– Concept of metapsychology as six-dimensional
– The role of mental pain
– The six dimensions

Figure: diagram of the model

2. A model of the individual-in-the-family-in-the-community
– The structural dimension
– The genetic dimension
– The dynamic dimension
– The geographic dimension
– The economic dimension
– The epistemological dimension

3. The community
– The benevolent community
– The maternal and paternal supportive communities
– The maternal and paternal parasitic communities
– The paranoid community

4. The basic assumption level of organization 
– Basic assumption group: dependence
– Basic assumption group: fight-flight
– Basic assumption group: pairing

5. The family organization
– Roles and functions in family life
– The couple family
– The matriarchal family
– The patriarchal family
– The gang family
– The reversed family

6. The personality organization of the individual
– The adult state of mind
– The infantile states of mind
– The inverted or perverted state of mind

7. The uses of the model
– Methodological uses
– Diagnostic uses
– Specific use for the educational function

Appendix I: The model, family and school
Meg Harris Williams
Appendix II: The school as counsellor
Roland Harris

References
Index

About the Authors

About the Authors

Donald Meltzer (1923–2004) was born in New York and studied medicine at Yale. After practising as a psychiatrist specialising in children and families, he moved to England to have analysis with Melanie Klein in the 1950s, and for some years was a training analyst with the British Society. He worked with both adults and children, and was innovative in the treatment of autistic children; in the treatment of children he worked closely with Esther Bick and Martha Harris whom he later married. He taught child psychiatry and psychoanalytic history at the Tavistock Clinic. He also took a special scholarly interest in art and aesthetics, based on a lifelong love of art. Meltzer taught widely and regularly in many countries, in Europe, Scandinavia, and North and South America, and his books have been published in many languages and continue to be increasingly influential in the teaching of psychoanalysis.
His first book, The Psychoanalytical Process, was published by Heinemann in 1967 and was received with some suspicion (like all his books) by the psychoanalytic establishment. Subsequent books were published by Clunie Press for the Roland Harris Educational Trust which he set up together with Martha Harris (now the Harris Meltzer Trust). The Process was followed by Sexual States of Mind in 1973, Explorations in Autism in 1975; The Kleinian Development in 1978 (his lectures on Freud, Klein and Bion given to students at the Tavistock); Dream Life in 1984; The Apprehension of Beauty in 1988 (with Meg Harris Williams); and The Claustrum in 1992.

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.

2 reviews for The Educational Role of the Family: A Psychoanalytical Model

  1. Martina Campart, psychologist, senior lecturer in social work at Malmö University, Sweden –

    ‘Owing to its integration of a psychoanalytical theory of learning with an ecological conception of how the various systems involved in the educational processes are interconnected, it is still of great present day relevance, both to practitioners working in conditions of great complexity and to policy-makers.’

  2. Clara Nemas, psychoanalyst, Buenos Aires, Argentina –

    ‘It is a splendid example of how the unique view of life afforded by psychoanalysis, together with observation, intuition, and deep contact and commitment to other members of the community, can offer a way of illuminating the complexities of the interaction between individuals and society.’

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