Bill Blomfield

DR. BILL BLOMFIELD

Interviewed by 

DR.  WENDY BRUMLEY 

on Friday 14 May 1993

Introduction by Christina Millott, Psychoanalyst (nee Blomfield)

This interview was unearthed in 2024 by Stuart Brumley, Wendy Brumley’s son. It was then passed onto Christine Brett-Vickers, who in turn sent the Manuscript to me. After much editing by myself and Shahid Najeeb, it is good to be able to share this important piece of oral history. Where italics in brackets are added, this is for clarification purposes.

Wendy Brumley died in 2025, aged 75, before she could complete a mission to publish more about the history of Psychoanalysis in Australia. Her background as a Psychologist is referred to in the text. Wendy had a particular interest in Dr. Clara Geroe, the Hungarian Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst, who pioneered the beginnings of Psychoanalysis in Melbourne in the 1940s.

My father, Bill Blomfield had a long and distinguished career working as an analyst, from the 1960s until his death at 87, in 2000.

He contributed a wealth of Scientific presentations and papers to our Society and Branch, and published a number of papers in International Journals as well as local ones. He was a much-respected and active member of the group.

WB Why don’t we go back to your early days in Psychoanalysis. Who were you influenced by early on?

BB Perhaps the first contact with Clara  (Dr Clara Lazar Geroe 1900-1980) would be the best place to start. I had been interested in reading about Psychoanalysis and in relation to education, Susan Isaacs (Psychoanalyst and Educator 1885-1948) her marvellous book on social development of children and the appendix which has their recorded interviews or recorded observations on four children, in a nursery, fascinates me. When I was in England in 1946, I got in touch with Susan Isaacs to seek advice about schools for my children and she recommended this school in High Wickham when we were living at Great Missenden, and then the other school in Missenden itself and the children went there. This was a school partly modelled on A.S. Neill’s school (“Summerhill”) Then on coming back to Australia in 1948, I had at that time been in analysis with Henry Ezriel for about 18 months before I came back, I started medicine here and I contacted Clara then.

WB  You hadn’t done your medicine or psychiatry before you went to England?

BB No. I had a permanent position in the RAF, and I was in the Air Force for 15 years. After I had a flying accident, I was in an out of hospital and got the idea of doing medicine then. So, after leaving the Air Force, I came back after having had some 18 months analysis with Henry Ezriel (in London) and through that I got in touch with Clara. She introduced me to Janet Nield who had the school Koornong, out on the Yarra (at Warrandyte) and my eldest boy David went there for a while. I discussed continuation of analysis with Clara and eventually after completing medicine and doing my residency at the Royal Melbourne, I started working at Royal Park Hospital and it was then that I went into analysis with Frank Graham and Clara, then eventually went into the training.

WB You knew to come back …..

BB I hadn’t known Clara before that. No, that isn’t right. It was back in 1942, and it was then I first met Clara and she introduced me to Janet.

WB So you hadn’t done medicine then. So the focus was already very much on Clara?

BB. Then I went back to England for two years at the end of 1946 and in 1948 came back here and started medicine at the beginning of 1949 at the Melbourne University branch up at Mildura.

WB I hadn’t heard of that.

BB The RTS university at Mildura? At the end of the war to cope with the servicemen doing professional training under the RTS (Rehabilitation Training Scheme). They offered under that to pay fees and to provide a living allowance which was repayable after you had qualified. I did medicine under this scheme and the first year they started the university at Mildura in 1947- 48 - 49 and 1950. It had first year Science, Medicine, Dentistry and was well equipped and it was a pity they didn’t keep it going. It could draw people from Adelaide and Sydney. 

WB If you were focused on Psychoanalysis already, Clara saw you perhaps as part of her entourage. 

BB It was very interesting to gain from her some insights and discussion particularly about children. I was very interested in the education of small children.

WB So your connection with Janet Nield would have been quite strong. Was she already an analyst by then?

BB She was then still training. Clara was very interested in the school and Janet was still training then and the school was interesting from an architectural point of view and her son Lawrence later became an architect. The kind of general atmosphere inside was very open. I don’t think it was as radical as A.S. Neild’s school (Summerhill) but it was certainly a move in that direction with the children themselves involved in running the school.

WB The art master was Danila Vassilieff. 

BB  Yes I knew him and he was a very interesting man. He made a house. He excavated the granite to make a sort of cave room and then used the excavated granite to build the rest of the house which had a tree growing in the middle of one room. It was fascinating. I am not sure what has happened to it now.

WB So you were fostered by Clara or did you just keep in touch?

BB One particular memory I’ve got is of having a picnic out there on the banks of the river with Clara and George and myself and Vassilieff and our children and Janet and Clive. It was a lovely afternoon on the riverbank.

WB She was apparently a very sociable person.

BB Yes and she loved children and was very good with them.

WB When you finished your medicine you went straight into your psychiatry training and then straight into analysis, or did you wait?

BB I went after doing residency at the Royal Melbourne, to Royal Park with John Cade. In the Air Force I had some interest in electronics and I became involved in setting up an electroencephalographic unit at Royal Park. In due course I went back into analysis with Frank Graham. That would have been about 1960 and then with his encouragement moved into the training and during that time Clara supervised two and eventually three cases for me and Frank another one. After leaving Royal Park, I went to work at the Children’s Hospital on a sessional basis and started practice in Collins Street. That must have been in 1964 after I had qualified. I rented one of the rooms in the Institute with Clara. So, I practiced there with Clara, Vera Roboz and myself. The room I used was also used by Paul Roboz, Vera‘s husband who is a paediatrician and that continued until 1969. Then I went to the Tavistock and spent 16 months at the Tavistock and then worked part time with Clara at her rooms on my return in the middle of 1970.

WB That is really a very different pattern. What I would like to talk to you about then is when she supervised you, because you are the first person that I’ve spoken to that she has supervised as opposed to analysed and people who have been in analysis with her find it very difficult to talk to me about her technique. If you could tell me a bit about how you perceived her working techniques because we know her analyst was Balint, don’t we. You have this direct connection. Everyone here is a sort of grandchild of Balint really.

BB Yes he came out a number of times during the time I was training and he helped with supervision and consultation and also ran some of his famous instructional seminars. Clara was very supportive and had a very good intuitive grasp of what was happening and was able to point one to various aspects of what was happening in the transference on an intuitive, rather than theoretical way, influenced by a particular sort of theory. I think this was her strength really, her capacity for intuitional insights and she could then convey them to you. We had our seminars out at her place in the evenings in Malvern and often, being at the end of the day, she would doze off. But she could then waken at a critical moment and make some incisive point.

WB Apparently, she worked very long hours. What time would you have gone there in the evenings? Early or late?

BB I think it was eight or eight thirty. Then she would have a spread of Viennese cakes. This was every week.

WB She did quite a lot of teaching then. Who was in that group that she was working with in the seminars?

BB Janet Nield, Rose Rothfield, Denis O’Brien, Neil Martin was with us then and Ian Waterhouse and Frank Graham of course. Harry Southwood would be over from Adelaide quite frequently and Reg Martin was with us too. He was at that stage working in Melbourne and went to Sydney later. 

WB So that was the nucleus really. This is what I’m interested in. That really was the crucial formation of analysis, analytic practice and training in this country, and it has come in this direct line from Balint.

BB I have a tape of one of Balint’s seminars with us.

WB That would be fascinating. I’ve written to Mrs. Balint. It’s difficult to pin her down to a time. I’ll have to go over to interview her. But of course, she wasn’t his first wife. She came out with him, but it would have been more interesting to talk to his first wife.

BB She took part in the seminars too and made a creative contribution.

WB Winston Rickards remembers him very well staying at the Children’s. There was really quite a lot of interaction. This is before the site committee came out. If it was an aim or a philosophy, was it Clara‘s objective to build up as many analysts to foster an active analytic core of people who … 

BB I think in the general sense to disseminate the Psychoanalytical approach and analytical insights, and she always retained the strong interest in education so she would speak to teachers who were sympathetic to the approach and had early contact with Preshil (The Margaret Lyttle Memorial School).

WB I must go and speak to the head mistress there. She knew Clara. I haven’t focused so much on the educational side so far. I think a lot of people apart from Winston haven’t thought so much about her orientation towards children, because she never saw herself as a child analyst. 

BB She did some early work with children as I understand from talking with her. it’s quite right that she didn’t count herself as a child analyst, but she saw and worked with children here and was certainly very sympathetic to the idea of child analysis.

WB. People who wanted to train to work with children had to go elsewhere at that stage.

BB Yes, there was nowhere in Australia they could have gone. 

WB For so long she was the only training analyst.

BB There were feelings that she held some people back and in that sense slowed up the possibility of development and there are some ambivalent feelings about her. I think she was cautious and maybe people were held up for good reasons.WB Frank and Reg Martin feel that she was rather controlling. What about Vera Roboz? She was the first new analyst after Clara from outside.

BB She had done training in Hungary and she worked with Professor Szondi (Hungarian Psychiatrist, Leopold Szondi 1893-1986). There was a Szondi test which consisted of classification of facial types and features and it fell into disrepute and was regarded more as a type of phrenology. But I believe he felt he could distinguish “criminal” types etc. I believe there was in fact a certain amount of unfairness about the sort of work he was doing and apparently, he did make substantial contributions. He wasn’t a psychoanalyst but certainly was sympathetic towards the idea and meeting people subsequently I believe he was an insightful person. The critique about the Szondi test rather put him in the wrong sort of light. Vera had that sort of background in working and training with him I understand she needed some sort of final supervision from Clara for recommendation for associate membership of the British society, which is how we all qualified in those early days. Starting the activities here was regarded as an extension of the British Psychoanalytical Society and Clara had been approved to conduct the training here. I believe Vera felt that Clara had held her up and there was some bad feeling on Vera’s part about that.

WB Extraordinary really, only two Hungarian women. Frank said that Vera was pretty vitriolic at times about Clara. I think if I remember correctly, he said that Vera went back to London to defend her paper or associate membership. I can’t remember the story now. This was the feeling that everyone wanted to grow faster. You have this one woman who was the only training analyst. It’s an accident of history almost that Ernest Jones tried to lure an analyst out here and she was the only one who made it. That’s how it all started, and her supervisor in those days they didn’t have very long analysis. I think it was only a few years. Who supervised her?

BB Ferenczi. Balint was her analyst.

WB We have this encapsulated history. It’s not diffuse. Did you perceive that at the time? Is that something you’ve seen in hindsight?

BB I was certainly aware of the tensions between Clara and Vera but I regarded her with affection and still do, so I suppose that has clouded insight into other sides of this dispute. 

WB Most people do. They remember her very fondly. That is why I am having difficulty getting a perception of her training technique.

BB In the seminar she would get someone to pretend to have the symptoms of whatever we were dealing with, anxiety or whatever, and it was stimulating. She didn’t perhaps bring out very critical aspects of the text but then it’s only later that one can do that with assurance, in the training. 

WB Well that’s the problem sometimes that clinicians aren’t always … Did you find that the group worked well together because it’s quite a large group that you’re talking about.

BB At that stage there wasn’t much polarisation like that really. I think we accepted the influence of people like Reg and Ron Brooks from Sydney and Rose Rothfield after she’d been to England and come back and brought back Kleinian insights. There wasn’t much polarisation. It was the theoretical issues from the introduction of Kleinian ideas and the Society became very strongly influenced by the Kleinian views. I think it’s interesting that those who came back, who had been trained in England, like Reg and Ron particularly earlier on, and then Rose, it seemed to me that the subsequent troubles here were more as if they had been brought back at an unconscious level, the kind of struggles between Melanie Klein and her daughter Melitta, so that there was to a degree, a kind of importing of neurotic conflicts which infected us. The subsequent difficulty and sometimes savage divisions in the Society here clearly had little basis of difference of views about theory, so it must have been from some other source. It always occurs to me, like in education, children don’t learn what the teachers imagine, they learn something else altogether. The importation of the Kleinian theoretical and clinical approach brought, at some stage, something which must have been imported unconsciously.

WB Rose came back with a Kleinian background and you say she fitted in again to the group and that Clara didn’t seem to be threatened.

BB When Rose first came back, we had our first seminar on her return, she marched in and sat in Clara’s chair. At the time I thought it was a bit rich.

WB But Clara went back to England a lot didn’t she?

BB Yes and she regularly went to the IPA Congress and was very much involved in keeping up her contact with the European analysts.

WB Do you think she shifted more towards the Kleinians after the war?

BB She accepted the Kleinian orientation but I don’t recall her being overtly critical and now you mention it I feel a bit surprised. I would perhaps have thought her orientation might have been more towards Anna Freud than Melanie Klein. Although Balint, while not overtly Kleinian, was not very critical of it. He had his own position, and I suppose that was so with Clara that it wasn’t a threat in that sense.

WB So you enjoyed her teaching and the group.

BB Yes it was a very good experience. She was certainly a containing and encouraging person.

WB But then historically the next wave wanted to get out and go away. There was this group of you who trained here, a few went away, well Frank went for another analysis. Rose would have been one of the first to come back, but you all integrated.

BB Particularly Reg Martin and Ron Brookes around then in Sydney developed a critical attitude towards the training here in Melbourne which they regarded as slip shod and lacking in discipline. They were particularly devoted to the Kleinian position, and this is how the tensions started to form. Harry Southwood in Adelaide was wanting to start training there and there was very strong opposition from Sydney to that end. At that stage the training committee was really centred in Sydney and very much dominated by Reg Martin and Ron Brookes and the historical Sydney versus Melbourne, entered into it and kind of infected the situation too.

WB I might have been wrong, but I picked up a certain feeling from Reg, because he’s a psychologist isn’t he, he did go on quite a lot about the psychologists and the psychiatrists or the medical faction. I just wondered how much of it was to do with that kind of split too, apart from the Sydney/Melbourne split. He said that Clara was very aware of the practicalities of keeping medical analyst training because of the financial aspects about rebates which is of course still a real issue.

BB Here in Melbourne she had a lot of difficulty because there was difficulty in getting her medical qualification, her doctorate in medicine recognised, so for a long time she was referred to as Madam Geroe, so she was robbed of her standing. Eventually, she did get it. Psychiatry in Melbourne then was dominated by people like John Williams at the Children’s, who was the first child psychiatrist at the Children’s and Alex Sinclair who was the senior psychiatrist at the Royal Melbourne and Charlie Brothers in the department. John Williams was avidly anti-Freud and he would burst into diatribes about Freud at the drop of a hat at most inappropriate moments. Clara got on well with them all really. She described John Williams as her nicest enemy!

WB How generous! She seemed to be very well liked by everyone and could go from one group to another very easily. I spoke to Mrs Phillips, Dr Phillips widow, and I had some very interesting chats with her about the early days, because he was analysed by Clara. Getting back to education, because not a lot of people have spoken to me about that, the Koornong school went for quite a few years and then closed. Is that right?

BB Yes I think financially they couldn’t make a go of it and Clive Nield went back into the Education Department where he had worked before and Janet concentrated more on her analytic work.

WB So Clara‘s interest in the school was really through Janet.

BB Also Janet‘s inspiration was from Clara. Clara had a very basic interest in education and psychoanalytic approaches to education. With the background here, Alex Sinclair ostensibly was supportive, but I think deeply ambivalent about Psychoanalysis so there was a kind of very strong polarity here, anti-psychoanalytic in psychiatry. Oscar Oeser also was professor of psychology (at Melbourne University) and he was very supportive of Clara and used to come to quite a number of special seminars, so Oscar was quite a supportive figure for Clara.

WB I think that was her gift. Melbourne was a lot smaller then and it was easier to move within groups but that must have been quite a diplomatic gift.

BB This is where her encouragement for Medical people to train had that political dimension to it. It was part of the stand against a strong bias in people of power in psychiatry against analysis.

WB And yet there were always people who were interested. The first paper was written in 1914 in the Australian Medical journal. How did you become interested? Were you influenced by people here in the country or was it when you were in England?

BB I became interested for personal reasons after I had a flying accident that let me eventually to analysis with Henry Ezriel in London.

WB I don’t know Henry.

BP He’s a figure in the development of the psychoanalytic approach to group psychotherapy. There are key papers written by him that are still published in all the main collections on group psychotherapy. One is in the British Journal for Philosophy of Science on philosophical aspects of interpretation in group analysis. It’s interesting that subsequently I was in analysis with Frank. Neither Ezriel nor Frank ever discussed, as far as I recall, group work with me during analysis, although subsequently Frank encouraged me to join one of his therapy groups, which I did for a couple of years, but my own interest in group work has that background from those early days.

WB I didn’t know you were interested in groups. I got turned off groups when I watched Henri Rey (Psychoanalyst 1912-2000) working with psychotics. This accident that you had was when you were in the Air Force?

BP Yes it was during the war while I was in the Air Force. I had been in Pakistan at the frontier with Afghanistan. They had minor wars going on there for years and I was involved with that and then in 1940 I was posted back to England. I had done the specialised training in communications, although I had been flying in India. This was the RAF. I learned to fly first of all here in Australia with the Australian Air Force at Point Cook and then I transferred to the RAF and they had a thing called the Dominion Exchange Scheme and I went to the RAF with a group of four of us in 1934. Then after some flying duties and after we all got short service commissions and they had a scheme where you could sit for a competitive specialisation exam and then choose if you were successful in getting one of the limited places. You could choose between specialisation in engineering, armament, navigation, or signals. I did that and went into communications. Then in 1940 I was posted back to England and worked in the Air Ministry for a year during the Blitz in London. I was living in London House then. I was posted out to Malta as Chief Signals Officer. After that I was lent the Australian Air Force loan in relation to communications, so I came back here and was working with the Director of Signals in the Air Force, but still trying to keep up my flying skills. But I had this accident in the Kitty Hawk (1944 Laverton, Victoria) due to a para-praxis with the controls. They had the only Hurricane at Laverton for a long time and I used to fly it to keep in practice, but this particular day it was unserviceable and I was lent the Kitty Hawk and the hydraulic controls at that stage were inverted. You pushed in one way for the hydraulic controls for flaps up and the other way for unlocking the under carriage, and it was the other way round in the Kitty Hawk and after landing I flipped the lever into what would have been flaps up in the Hurricane but unlocked the undercarriage in the Kitty Hawk and it sat down on a long range fuel tank which was underneath. So that put the kybosh on my flying career. After that I was in an out of hospital having plastic surgery for about a year and so by the time it was 1946 and I went back at the end of the war to England and worked in Command Operations Headquarters, Mountbatten’s outfit, on signals, putting together lessons in relation to signals, and it was then that I went into analysis with Henry. During the time I was here in 1942-1943 it was then that I first met Clara. She came here as I recall in 1940 so she would have been here about 18 months or two years when I met her.

WB How did you hear about Clara?

BB The initial contact with was with a colleague in the Air Force, another Signals Officer, whose adopted son was in treatment with Clara and the first meeting I went with him and his wife to a picnic out at Koornong.

WB It really was quite a coincidence through the Air Force. Have you gone back to England very much? I’m interested in the analytic group historically here which I feel is very encapsulated compared with some other countries.

BB  I went back in 1969. I had been working at the Royal Children’s Hospital and also at the Queen Victoria where I was appointed to succeed Porter (Dr Una Beatrice Porter:1900-1996) who had been the honorary psychiatrist at Queen Victoria for many years. She was retiring, and she spoke to me and suggested that I offer myself for appointment there, which I did, and then I really wanted to get some experience in London so I applied to the Tavistock, and Don Buckle gave me an introduction to John Bowlby. That was the contact I followed up. I then got the appointment both to the Tavistock and their general course and a clinical appointment in the Tavistock clinic at the department with children and parents. So I had a very interesting and exciting time. I was there for 16 months altogether and enjoyed it enormously. At the IPA Congress in Rome (1970) I met Harold Kaye who was in the Institute for group analysis and there was a post Congress conference and group psychotherapy held down at Paestum south of Naples at the Villa of a German analyst and psychotherapist who had got together this International Congress. Harold Kaye was involved with the Institute of Group Analysis and was quite a figure in the training there and he suggested I could get into the so-called advanced course. By this time I had done some group psychotherapy with supervision from Frank in Melbourne, so I did that simultaneously with being at the Tavistock. I used to dash up and down the tube between the Tavistock and Institute of Group Analysis   Street just near the Baker Street tube. I was doing various things at the Tavistock with Bob Gosling and his Henry Ezriel was in fact running group supervision, which I joined and Pierre Turquet (1913-1975) an introductory course in group dynamics and an experiential group which I was in as well. So having all that group of friends at the Tavistock and then at the Institute, I was in a group with Elsa Seglare and a training group, and then Pat Demare, a group which focused on …  He was running that with Foulkes himself and also a group run by Harold Kaye on the new aspects of the literature, which was turning up all the time. It was a reading study group. It is extraordinary the two different approaches. The Tavistock was very influenced by Bion. You would think it was they were on different planets for all the communication that occurred between them.

WB Foulkes’ grandson is out here. I met him at the Clinic. There was quite a split wasn’t there. This is one of the things I think is very different for Australians, the way they used to have to go back to train.

BB While I was there from a psychoanalytic point of view I went to Betty Joseph’s seminars. I was a member of her group for the whole period I was there and Hans Thorner (1905-1991) and Herbert Rosenfeld  (1910-1986) and I went to a few of Winnicott’s clinical seminars, so I had quite a good contact with the Kleinian group in London.

WB The historical greats!

BB Even then it used to amuse me outside at the end of Betty Joseph’s seminars, the way people gathered together after a seminar on the street, that they would hiss about Anna Freud. Coming from a situation from outside, we can always see a ludicrous character about these kind of … 

WB You say that back here it didn’t seem to be a Kleinian mother/daughter thing. Clara and Vera perhaps.

BB Certainly Reg was very bitter towards…

WB I couldn’t quite come to terms with what that was all about, the unfinished business and as you say the Sydney-Melbourne thing.

BB That certainly came into it.

WB And the business about Adelaide training too, that must have been pretty nasty.

BB Extraordinary. Harry Southwood was battling there almost on his own, trying to get something off the ground, but everything has to start from rather difficult and crippled beginnings because of Clara being the only analyst for so long and having to do supervision as well as analysis. It was either that or nothing. The centralised training committee which by that time was centred in Sydney, was very puritanical about standards of training and the idea of anything starting in Adelaide before there was a proper group to do it was bitterly opposed.

WB And it is still a problem. Everybody out west is cut off. It’s still only Sydney and Melbourne really isn’t it.

BB Like in England it’s London. They’re always having discussions on getting analysis going somewhere else but I think it’s often handicapped by puritanical attitudes. “We’re the only ones who know what’s what and you can’t do it until such and such structure exists”. Well such and such structure can’t exist until you get something off the ground.

WB Is that why you want me to read that book? Because when I was dipping into it, it was talking about the whole concept of who has the knowledge.

BB It seemed to me an interesting view on how ideas form and this idea of thought collectives in his book, I thought was a very powerful one.

WB The whole business of what is theory and what is training. This is what I can’t get to grips with as far as Clara is concerned. No one is giving me enough perception of what was the clinical work and what was the theoretical training.

BB She stuck very closely to Freud’s texts so we did get a good grounding in Freud‘s text. She didn’t often go outside that except to Balint particularly.

WB What do you feel with that kind of hindsight you have, about this kind of historical background of Psychoanalysis in Australia with Balint, Freud, Ferenczi, Clara?

BB When you say that are you asking what do I feel?

WB Do you wish it had been different, or do you think it was a good thing?

BB My advice is what happens, happens. Considering the difficulties it was a remarkable achievement.

WB That is why very quickly I focused on her. When you think of the luck of the draw, 11 analysts, and we get Clara.

BB The chance element in history, Chaos Theory that we can be drawn off into one particular direction or another.

WB when you go back and look at her childhood and adolescence, she was a very single -minded, tough-minded woman actually. She wasn’t something that just happened. She had enormous struggles to get an education, Jewish, female, everything was stacked against her and in the time she grew up in order to do matriculation she had to go to the gymnasium which was only for boys. There was no way, but she got in and she sat in on the classes and did the equivalent of matriculation by correspondence and then still couldn’t get into medicine because of the 5% rule about Jews. She was originally Jewish, but like a lot of Hungarian Jews she gave up being Jewish. How did you perceive that? Were you aware that she was Jewish?

BB No. Occasionally I would wonder whether she was Jewish or not. In fact, in the end I came to the conclusion that she wasn’t Jewish. I am interested to hear whether she in fact did give it up formally or just drifted.

WB I think probably drifted as much as anything like a lot of middle class Jews must have, who assimilated. Nevertheless, some who were close to her remained Jewish.

BB I never met Andrew Peto while he was here. I met him subsequently at a couple of International meetings, but he started things in a way in Sydney , but then moved on.

WB He apparently said there was no room in Melbourne for him and Clara, so she must’ve been a very strong lady. I hear very different stories about Peto, he was very good, very charming and a very successful analyst in New York, but I think Frank’s feeling was that there wasn’t enough room, which interests me because there were just the two of them. I know it’s sometimes better to have a crowd rather than just two. Peto came here before Vera and Vera managed to stay but Peto didn’t.

BB I don’t know what sort of contact there was between Clara and Peto. She never referred to him much but perhaps that was because of her feeling this was her nest.

WB Was it a good feeling, being part of the nest?

BB I enjoyed it. Perhaps it was the other women who felt it most. I think it was difficult for Rose and I think Janet, as I recall, had a fairly positive relationship with Clara. 

WB Why do you think she went to Sydney then, Janet?

BB I think it was probably because Clive, her husband, got a job when they closed the school with the New South Wales Education Department. I think that was fairly central. Then her son, whether he did architecture in Sydney, I think he went to the university there so they stayed there.

WB Janet Nield really interests me very much. Such a shame I didn’t have a chance to speak with her. She must have been an extraordinary woman for her time.

BB Most unusual. Would you like me to look up whether I’ve got a paper of hers? The history needs some insight into the extraordinary nature of the polarisations and tensions here. I’ve just started reading the controversial discussions in relation to the British society, edited by Pearl King and Ricardo Steiner, and it’s a brilliant bit of history they’ve recorded. They must have a first rate shorthand writer who wrote down verbatim all the interchanges and it is absolutely enthralling, particularly having known some of the characters. The situation here really needs this kind of writing with some attempt to understand the nature of the polarisation and so on.

WB When you say the polarisation are you talking about Sydney and Melbourne?

BB Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and the struggle in the training like it did in the British Society. The struggle focus became focused around the training committee and the control of training and the control of selection and so on. Of course that is apparently the story with other psychoanalytic societies too, that it has always come down to a struggle in the training committees.

WB So this Steiner/King book- what is it called?

BB It is called Controversial Discussions in the British Psychoanalytical Society. Things reached such a peak that they agreed to have these discussions with Melanie Klein and Mrs Isaacs and Paula Heimann at that stage and others around her and on the other side Melitta Schmideberg and her husband Walter and Glover who was Mellitta’s analyst, with Winnicott hovering in the middle. They agreed to have a series of discussions and try to bring it all out into the open and I must say, you have to take your hat off when you read this sort of stuff. It was a courageous effort and the discussion is of a very high standard on the whole, although there were barbs and stabs.

WB I had better read it. You have put your finger on something that concerns me about the possibility of writing a history which is centred here. First of all, there have not been proper records kept. There has been no archivist in the Institute. Frank has given me a lot of documents but I think it’s a bit of a mishmash. He claims that things have been deleted and I’m sure everyone starts to get a bit paranoid. Who wants or needs to know all this anyway, particularly outside the psychoanalytic group, which is a much smaller group here. In England you have such an historic polarisation, but here, is this just fighting in a little backyard?

BB I think essentially it is just something to be understood. I find it intriguing looking back on it, as to what it was all about. It certainly wasn’t about theoretical issues.

WB It sounds like real mud slinging stuff.

BB Where did all that come from? I have the feeling Mrs Klein and Melitta somehow being insinuated into it and this extraordinary polarity somehow arising here for unconscious reasons. After all this is what we ought to be interested in. There is incidentally a paper recently written by Chili Naparstek. It is an attempt at oral history in relation to people’s feelings or the idea or image of the Institute. It is certainly overlaps or is complimentary to what you are doing.

WB Chili is on my list.

BB I personally thought it was badly organised and he somehow thought, like you were fearing, that investigation would perhaps degenerate into archival gossip or that it wouldn’t have any substance. I fear his has floundered in that sense. It was interesting to look at.

WB It is a huge issue for me in terms of focus. Neville Symington said to me that he felt it was important to write up the history.

BB Frank was in the chair, he was President (of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society) then. I remember Reg leaping from his chair and rushing up to Frank who was chairing the meeting and Frank thought he was going to attack him and it certainly looked as if he was, and so Frank felt very physically threatened by Reg. Finally, because they felt Frank was partisan, they wanted it chaired by someone else and Frank agreed to withdraw. Then I chaired the remainder of the meeting as I was Deputy. It was an extraordinary meeting.

WB Is this a question of the age-old problem always in Australia, of the States?

BB I think it’s certainly entered into it. Adelaide, from Sydney, was regarded rather like Australia must have been from London, rather like the Colonies. The problem is getting anyone from Sydney to go to Adelaide and even find out what was happening. You’d think it was like going from London to Australia in a sailing ship. The training committee was so centrally active around Reg Martin and Ron Brookes who were very centred in London. Reg was very close to Betty Joseph. It was that kind of tension.

WB So whether this is about training or about Clara..

BB Clara and the group.

WB it will be interesting to see what happens now that Gregorio Kohon has gone to Brisbane and whether people will drift up to Brisbane.

BB They have had some good meetings.

WB The Australian Psychoanalytical Society has a Commonwealth of States Board and I was sitting on that at one stage and it really is the most extraordinary thing. It always becomes a State thing. The States were at each others’ throats. I could never see us becoming cohesive. Every state had to have their own point of view.

BB Isn’t it extraordinary the persistence of these polarities and divisions. In families, the kind of family quarrels whether there is a specific story, the story becomes forgotten, but the polarity of feelings remain long after. No one knows what it was about, it’s all so embedded.

WB Reg Martin said to me “Are you going to write a book about this?” and I said I don’t know and he said “It won’t be a bestseller will it?” But it’s a very difficult thing. That sort of thing is going to appear to a very small group.

BB Just as a sample of history, it’s like a very special bit of history. It stands for all of history. I think what went on, goes on everywhere. It may be more easily seen.

WB Everyone I have spoken to has said that they didn't know why it hasn’t been done before. I said I think it’s partly because I’m an outsider. I come from Sydney, I trained in England on the whole and I lived out of the country for nearly 25 years.

BB I think only someone outside, but sufficiently close to it to know what it’s all about, could do it.

WB Also the people who are in the Institute now, a lot more come from outside like the Symingtons. So all those old hostilities are diluted, plus now I think the Institute realises, that is my perception, that in order to survive they really are going to have to interact more. They became so enclosed that they were cutting off their own lifeline.

BB It’s been that same attitude to selection.

WB Once I saw the interest from other departments of universities, I felt the Institute really was cutting off its nose. There are so many interested and talented people out there.

BB I think it’s is enormously important. Any help I can give you, I would be only too happy to. Tucked away in the attic I’ve got most of the Minutes during all the time I was involved.

WB Has it been raised at the Institute that all the stuff should be collated?

BB I don’t think so. I’ll talk to Ken Heyward about it. A lot of people have backed off because of the current persisting sensitivities. But you can overdo that.