John Steiner worked as a consultant in the Adult Department of the Tavistock Clinic between 1972 and 1997[1]. He is the author of Psychic Retreats (1993), Seeing and Being Seen (2011), and Illusion, Disillusion and Irony in Psychoanalysis (2020), and has also edited and written introductions to several books including The Oedipus Complex Today, (1989), papers by Hanna Segal entitled, Psychoanalysis, Literature and War, (1997) and essays on Herbert Rosenfeld’s clinical influence, entitled Rosenfeld in Retrospect, (2008). Recently (2017) he has edited Melanie Klein’s Lectures on Technique which she gave in 1936. Throughout his career he published a number of influential papers and is responsible for coining a number of terms and phrases that are used in contemporary psychoanalysis[2].
John was born in Prague in 1934[3]. His mother was an actuary in an insurance company and his father studied law but only worked for one year as a lawyer before his career came to a halt when the Germans moved into Prague in March of 1939[4]. The family managed to leave Prague in August 1939 and spent nine months in France[5] before moving to New Zealand[6]. It was a very traumatic time especially having to leave John’s grandmother in France because she was ill with heart disease and did not get a visa for New Zealand[7]. His mother’s family were able to escape to the US but almost all of John’s father’s family died in Auschwitz – they refused to leave Prague, not recognising the danger they were in[8].
He and his family loved New Zealand which was not only beautiful but had a liberal attitude and at that time welcomed immigrants. His father could use his earlier training as a cabinet maker to find work and eventually established a furniture business[9]. John’s mother became a schoolteacher and a child John and his younger brother enjoyed the beach and walking in the bush. In 1952[10] he began to study medicine at the University of Otago and became interested in Freud and psychoanalysis. However he was also interested in the brain and took a year off to do research in neurophysiology[11]. After qualifying as a doctor in 1958 John went to California and worked with the Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist Roger Sperry at Caltech. He then did research in experimental psychology at the University of Cambridge, completing his PhD in 1964[12] under the supervision of Larry Weiskranz and Oliver Zangwill[13].
In 1963 he married Deborah Pickering[14] in Cambridge. Later she trained as a child psychotherapist at the Tavi under Mattie Harris, and after that as a psychoanalyst at the Institute. In the 1990s[15] she wrote two of the volumes in the Tavi series ‘Understanding Your One Year Old’ (1992) and ‘Understanding Your Six Year Old’ (1993) and later wrote the section on Child Analysis in the ‘New Dictionary of Kleinian Thought’[16] Edited by Elisabeth Spillius.
In 1964 John moved to London where he trained in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital. There he was influenced Aubrey Lewis and especially by Henri Rey[17],[18], a lively French speaking psychoanalyst from Mauritius who taught him how to apply psychoanalytic ideas in a psychiatric hospital. After qualifying as a psychiatrist John remained at the Maudsley, doing some more research with the help of a Wellcome senior fellowship[19]. In 1967 he began a personal analysis with Hanna Segal and soon after began psychoanalytic training at the Institute of Psychoanalysis[20].
The important influences on his analytic work came from Hanna Segal, Herbert Rosenfeld and Betty Joseph[21]. He started an analytic practice alongside his NHS work and was especially interested in the application of psychoanalysis to patients in a variety of settings. He came to the Tavistock Clinic as a Consultant in the Adult Department in 1972, having sessions there and at the Maudsley[22]. After two years he found the split post too difficult to manage and he temporarily left the Tavi until he was able to return in 1976.[23]
The atmosphere at the Tavi was very different to that which seems to pertain today where financial and other pressures seem to threaten the survival of a psychoanalytic approach. John found it stimulating and conducive to enjoyable work which allowed him to develop his psychoanalytic ideas and their application to psychotherapy. Under the Chairmanship of Bob Gosling decisions at the Tavi were made slowly and by consensus. Initially he says that he found the process frustrating, but later he appreciated the priority given to thought over action.[24]
When John joined the Adult Department group psychotherapy and group relations were an important feature and almost everyone conducted at least one or two groups[25]. John ran therapy groups and also a Balint group being particularly influenced by Pierre Tourquet[26]. He remembers being impressed with the monthly discussion sessions in which Bob Gosling and Tom Main were prominent[27].
While at the Maudsley John became interested in borderline patients and this continued at the Tavi where because of his psychiatric experience psychotic and borderline patients were commonly referred to him. When he returned in 1976 he established a weekly seminar which became known as the Borderline Workshop[28]. This workshop was based in the Adult Department but was attended by staff and students from across the building[29]. A feature of the workshop was the linking of clinical and theoretical understanding, and each seminar consisted of an hour of clinical presentation followed by the discussion of a theoretical paper. From time to time senior psychoanalysts were invited as guests.
In addition to the workshop John was involved in the ordinary teaching and clinical work of the department. He established the introductory course, D58, that is still running today in which the students were offered clinical supervision and were expected to be in individual therapy themselves. In 1985 his friend Anton Obholzer was elected Chair of the Professional Committee and initiated a period of more active management, which some people found difficult after the laid back style of Bob Gosling and Alexis Brook[30]. At that time John was criticised because he did not attend many administrative meetings and Anton supported him by arguing that people should be allowed to do what they were best at[31].
While at the Tavi John, together with Michael Michalacopoulos a psychoanalyst from South London, helped to set up The Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the NHS (APP)[32] to support the role pf psychoanalysis in the public services. He became its first Chairman from 1982 to 1988 and helped to establish the journal, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy[33].
It was around this time that John began to develop the idea of psychic retreats and in 1993 he published his first book on this topic. Building on Klein’s central concepts of projective identification, and the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, John described how borderline patients use such retreats as a defence anxiety and depression[34]. He showed how pathological organisations can help to evade pain and anxiety but often end up leading to a resistance to change that may bring about stasis both in personal life and analysis. Later he explored the obstacles that patients have in emerging from a psychic retreat and emphasised the problems patients had in overcoming embarrassment, shame and humiliation. John retired in 1996 but continued to teach, write and developing his ideas most recently collected in his book Illusion, Disillusion and Irony in Psychoanalysis (2020).
Author: Glenn Gosssling/John Steiner 2020
[1] M Waddell & S Kraemer (eds), ‘Working at the Tavistock Clinic 1972 – 1997’, chapter in 2020 Vision: The Tavistock Century, Phoenix Publishing House, September 2020
[2] Ana Paulina de Sauma, ‘John Steiner’, 2012, https://melanie-klein-trust.org.uk/writers/john-steiner/
[3] M Waddell & S Kraemer (eds), ‘Working at the Tavistock Clinic 1972 – 1997’, chapter in 2020 Vision: The Tavistock Century, Phoenix Publishing House, September 2020
[4] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[5] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[6] M Waddell & S Kraemer (eds), ‘Working at the Tavistock Clinic 1972 – 1997’, chapter in 2020 Vision: The Tavistock Century, Phoenix Publishing House, September 2020
[7] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[8] ‘John Steiner receives the 2016 Sigourney Award’, https://psychoanalysis.org.uk/blog/john-steiner-receives-the-2016-sigourney-award
[9] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[10] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[11] Ana Paulina de Sauma, ‘John Steiner’, 2012, https://melanie-klein-trust.org.uk/writers/john-steiner/
[12] M Waddell & S Kraemer (eds), ‘Working at the Tavistock Clinic 1972 – 1997’, chapter in 2020 Vision: The Tavistock Century, Phoenix Publishing House, September 2020
[13] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[14] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[15] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[16] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[17] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[18] M Waddell & S Kraemer (eds), ‘Working at the Tavistock Clinic 1972 – 1997’, chapter in 2020 Vision: The Tavistock Century, Phoenix Publishing House, September 2020
[19] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[20] Ana Paulina de Sauma, ‘John Steiner’, 2012, https://melanie-klein-trust.org.uk/writers/john-steiner/
[21] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[22] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[23] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[24] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[25] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[26] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[27] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[28] M Waddell & S Kraemer (eds), ‘Working at the Tavistock Clinic 1972 – 1997’, chapter in 2020 Vision: The Tavistock Century, Phoenix Publishing House, September 2020
[29] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[30] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020
[31] M Waddell & S Kraemer (eds), ‘Working at the Tavistock Clinic 1972 – 1997’, chapter in 2020 Vision: The Tavistock Century, Phoenix Publishing House, September 2020
[32] M Waddell & S Kraemer (eds), ‘Working at the Tavistock Clinic 1972 – 1997’, chapter in 2020 Vision: The Tavistock Century, Phoenix Publishing House, September 2020
[33] M Waddell & S Kraemer (eds), ‘Working at the Tavistock Clinic 1972 – 1997’, chapter in 2020 Vision: The Tavistock Century, Phoenix Publishing House, September 2020
[34] G Gossling, unpublished interview with John Steiner 19/05/2020