Book review of Harris and Bick 'The Tavistock Model'

This is a revised edition of the Collected papers of Martha Harris and Esther Bick, published in 1987 by the Clunie Press, also edited by Meg Harris Williams. It benefits from a new foreword by Harris Williams, and three Appendices: an appreciation by Donald Meltzer on Martha Harris’s contribution to the Tavistock Course written after her death in 1987, an account of the experience of being in an infant observation seminar with Mrs Bick, and a thoughtful account of the development and impact of infant observation in child psychotherapy training by Margaret Rustin. This collection of papers excludes some of Harris’ papers on adolescence which are published in a separate collection on Harris’ work on adolescence and has been reorganized to reveal central features of Harris’ work and the evolving thrust of the training. Thus, the collection begins with an account of the Tavistock training and its philosophy, followed by papers illustrating the impact of Bion’s ideas and the attempt to move these into pedagogic practice. Harris’ last published paper on ‘growing points in psychoanalysis inspired by the work of Melanie Klein’, aims to chart an evolution of ideas, moving through the work of Klein, Bick, Bion and Meltzer, contributing to something less like a position statement than a developmental model applicable to the growth of mind and its vicissitudes across the lifespan.