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Neville Symington (3 July 1937 - 3 December 2019) was a member of the Middle Group of British Psychoanalysts which argues that the primary motivation of the child is object-seeking rather than drive gratification. [1] He published a number of books on psychoanalytic topics, and was President of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society from 1999 to 2002.
Neville Symington was born in Portugal, and was a Catholic priest before becoming a psychoanalyst. [2] He worked in England at the Tavistock Clinic, and the British Institute of Psycho-Analysis, [3] before emigrating to Australia in 1986.
Symington was perhaps best known for his work on narcissism, which he considered to be the central psychopathology underlying all others. [4] Symington introduced the concept of the 'lifegiver' as a kind of transitional object made up from the healthy part of the self combined with aspects of the motherer, and considered that narcissism emerged from the rejection of that object, and with it a sense of an authentically lived existence. [5]
The result of that refusal is that, in Polly Young-Eisendrath's terms, "in place of autonomy, the adult...would come to obey an internal source that the psychoanalyst Neville Symington calls the 'discordant source'". [6]
The origins of his book on narcissism came about, in Symington's words, when "I started to work on the subject of Psychoanalysis and Religion, and it came to me quite early in that research that the connecting link between the two disciples was narcissism". [7] Both subjects were very close to Symington's central concerns. A former priest, Symington in his later writings returned to an exploration of religion alongside that of the mystical elements in psychology. [8]
Symington declared that "[Psychoanalysis] is a natural religion but not a revealed one", [9] its goal of arriving at the depressive position being an inherently moral one. His distinction has been followed up by many analysts who take a positive view of religion in a Winnicottian tradition. [10]
Others, however, consider that Symington's search for a positive interrelationship between psychoanalysis and religion leads inevitably to a certain moralism [11] – psychoanalysis being what Adam Phillips called "a moral enterprise...that has to work hard not to become a moralistic one'. [12]
Robert M. Young took specific exception to what he saw as a pontifical element in Symington's study of W. R. Bion, considering that it could be attributed to the religious subtext in Symington's recent writings. [13]
Nina Coltart, in expressing some of her own doubts about psychoanalytic training, noted that "Neville Symington...is of the opinion that a long personal analysis, which we all have as part of our training, leaves the narcissism stronger, and the ego weaker, than they were at the beginning". [14]
Symington had from early on emphasised the importance of the analyst's spontaneity – what he called "the analyst's act of freedom as agent of therapeutic change" [15] – something which may be linked to his existential viewpoint on narcissism. [16]
Symington maintained that "truth in psychoanalysis emerges between the analyst and the patient and...demands that a preconception is abandoned in both". [17]
Jeanette Winterson found the plainness and straightforwardness of Symington's writing style offered something of a framework for her mid-life journey through madness. [18]
Winterson states: "Symington talks about how the mad part will try to wreck the mind. That had been my experience". [19]
Neville Symington died in Sydney, Australia, on 3 December 2019, at the age of 82. [20]
Joan and Neville Symington, The Clinical Thinking of Wilfrid Bion (1997)
Wilfred Ruprecht Bion DSO was an influential English psychoanalyst, who became president of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1962 to 1965.
The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is a specialist mental health trust based in north London. The Trust specialises in talking therapies. The education and training department caters for 2,000 students a year from the United Kingdom and abroad. The Trust is based at the Tavistock Centre in Swiss Cottage. The founding organisation was the Tavistock institute of medical psychology founded in 1920 by Dr. Hugh Crichton-Miller.
Heinz Hartmann, was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He is considered one of the founders and principal representatives of ego psychology.
Projective identification is a term introduced by Melanie Klein and then widely adopted in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Projective identification may be used as a type of defense, a means of communicating, a primitive form of relationship, or a route to psychological change; used for ridding the self of unwanted parts or for controlling the other's body and mind.
In Freudian psychoanalysis, the ego ideal is the inner image of oneself as one wants to become. It consists of "the individual's conscious and unconscious images of what he would like to be, patterned after certain people whom ... he regards as ideal."
Socio-analysis is the activity of exploration, consultancy, and action research which combines and synthesises methodologies and theories derived from psychoanalysis, group relations, social systems thinking, organisational behaviour, and social dreaming.
Donald Meltzer (1922–2004) was a Kleinian psychoanalyst whose teaching made him influential in many countries. He became known for making clinical headway with difficult childhood conditions such as autism, and also for his theoretical innovations and developments. His focus on the role of emotionality and aesthetics in promoting mental health has led to his being considered a key figure in the "post-Kleinian" movement associated with the psychoanalytic theory of thinking created by Wilfred Bion.
Rafael E. Lopez-Corvo is a Venezuelan-born medical doctor, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He is a former associate professor at Ottawa and McGill Universities and Program Director of Child and Adolescents Unite at the Douglas Hospital, McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He was also a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis for Latin-America. Likewise, he is a training and supervising psychoanalyst for the International Psychoanalytic Association as well as the Canadian, Venezuelan and American Psychoanalytic Societies.
Nina Coltart, a British psychoanalyst, psychotherapist, and essayist.
Neutrality is an essential part of the analyst's attitude during treatment, developed as part of the non-directive, evenly suspended listening which Freud used to complement the patient's free association in the talking cure.
Herbert Alexander Rosenfeld was a German-British psychoanalyst.
In psychology, narcissistic withdrawal is a stage in narcissism and a narcissistic defense characterized by "turning away from parental figures, and by the fantasy that essential needs can be satisfied by the individual alone". In adulthood, it is more likely to be an ego defense with repressed origins. Individuals feel obliged to withdraw from any relationship that threatens to be more than short-term, avoiding the risk of narcissistic injury, and will instead retreat into a comfort zone. The idea was first described by Melanie Klein in her psychoanalytic research on stages of narcissism in children.
Narcissistic elation or narcissistic coenaesthetic expansion were terms used by Hungarian psychoanalyst Béla Grunberger to highlight 'the narcissistic situation of the primal self in narcissistic union with the mother'.
Christopher Bollas is a British psychoanalyst and writer. He is a leading figure in contemporary psychoanalytic theory.
John Rickman was an English psychoanalyst.
Martha Harris, née Dunlop was a British Kleinian psychoanalyst of children and adults. From 1960 to 1980 she was head of the Child Psychotherapy service at the Tavistock Clinic, taking over from Esther Bick, who had established a foundational method of disciplined infant observation. Harris was responsible for the subsequent expansion in the number of English and international trainees at the Tavistock, and for laterally developing the training into what became known as the Tavi Model. This model, in which infant observation continues to play a pre-eminent role, has been adopted, with modifications, in other European countries and in South America: such as the GERPEN in France, the six Martha Harris Study Centres in Italy, and the São Paulo Mother-Baby Study Centre in Brazil.
Psychoanalytic infant observation is a distinct empirical case study method in psychoanalytic and psychotherapy training which was developed at the Tavistock Clinic in London by child psychoanalyst Esther Bick. In 1948 she collaborated with Dr John Bowlby to develop the approach as part of psychotherapy training. It has since become an essential feature of pre-clinical training in child and adult psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and related fields throughout the Western world.
Michael (Mike) Eigen is a psychologist and psychoanalyst. He is the author of 26 books and numerous papers. He has given a private seminar on Winnicott, Bion, Lacan and his own work since the 1970s. Eigen is known for his work with patients "who had been given up on by others", including people who experience psychosis.
Edna O'Shaughnessy was a South African-born British Kleinian psychoanalyst.
Patrick Casement is a British psychoanalyst and author of multiple books and journal articles on contemporary psychoanalytic technique. He has been described as a pioneer in the relational approaches to psychoanalysis and psychotherapy by Andrew Samuels, Professor of Analytical Psychology. His book 'Learning from Our Mistakes' received a Gradiva award for its contribution to psychoanalysis, and his book 'Learning Along the Way: Further Reflections on Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy' was listed in the top 100 psychotherapy books of all time by Bookauthority.