Frank Graham
FRANK GRAHAM
Interviewed by
WENDY BRUMLEY
(Reprinted here with kind permission from “The Australian Journal of Psychotherapy” Volume14, Numbers 1 & 2. 1995.)
This is the transcription of a conversation between Dr. Wendy Brumley and Dr. Frank Graham on Tuesday, 20th October 1992. Dr. Graham A.M. was born on 28th April 1914, on Ocean Island in the Central Pacific. When he was two, he succumbed to poliomyelitis and was affected in all his limbs. In spite of his handicaps, he graduated from Sydney University in 1940 and began his analytic training in the 1940's. He was one of the first training analysts in Australia. He was a central pioneer in the psychoanalytic approach to group psychotherapy in Australia. He was Chairman for a number of years of the Australian Psychoanalytic Society and medical psychoanalyst to Prince Henry's Hospital from 1975-1980. He wrote a number of papers, especially on the interface between individual and group analysts.
He died in Melbourne on 21st May 1995 a year after celebrating his 80th birthday with a large group of friends and colleagues.
WB: Can you tell me about when you first became interested in psychoanalysis.
FG: The first thing that decided me to become an analyst was an article in An Outline of Knowledge by J.C. Flugel. I read this with a lot of other stuff I was reading, anthropology and God knows what, in my teens, and when I read this paper on psychoanalysis I said 'This is it. This is what I want to be'. By the way, later on in my life in London I told him about this and he was delighted. He was delighted to hear that his book actually put me onto it. Now, after that I didn't know how to find an analyst. I was a medical student at the time and I
didn't know what to do. However, my father was a doctor and there were two articles which appeared in the Medical Journal of Australia that were by an analyst Roy Coupland Winn.
Was he an Australian?
FG: Oh, yes. He was an Australian and he was a scion of a big emporium family. The Winn brothers — they had a big business in Sydney and he was a partner, but a sleeping partner and he was at the time, or had been, a physician on the staff at Sydney Hospital. He was shot up in the war in Gallipoli, lost a foot. But then he went to London and had a training analysis. When I say he had a training analysis, it was before the times when he was O.K.'d as a training analyst so he really became an analyst.
Who would have been his analyst?
FG: I could find out for you. He was a well known analyst who was in the Mental Hospital Department over there. He analysed him. He came back to Sydney. He gave up his work as a physician and he set up as the only psychoanalyst, the first one I believe, in Australia.
WIC: What year would that have been ?
FG: That would be in the 1930's sometime. That could be checked The early 1930's. When I went to him it was in the late 1930's and I had several talks with him, just meeting him, and we decided that I would go into analysis with him and I had about eighteen months with him. He was very interested in a way to get a medical student who was interested. I think I was the only one who ever went to him before or since. I don't think any other medical student ever went to him. He was delighted. After I had had some eighteen months analysis, or during that time, he told me that there was a training analyst coming to Australia, a Dr. Geroe was coming to Melbourne if possible, and he would tell me when she arrived. I asked Roy, 'Now look, do you see anything about me that is against my becoming an analyst?' He said 'no'. I said 'all right'. I packed up and off I went to Melbourne.
WB: You knew she was coming to Melbourne. Dr. Winn knew she was coming to Melbourne ?
FG: That's right. I came to Melbourne to see her and she accepted me as a candi-
date, so I went back to Sydney and collected my wife and everything else, and so I emigrated here to Melbourne to the Mental Hygiene Department at Royal Park Receiving House, where I stipulated that I wanted time off to do a training
analysis and to attend to that side of things as well as my work at Royal Park,
and they agreed to that. So over I came. I did my training with her for five or six years, I think it was, and at the same time I did my D.P.M. and my general psychiatric training at Royal Park. I had already been at Broughton Hall so I had an introduction to it. That was an important thing for me to do my general psychiatry at the same time as my training in analysis with the seminars and my personal analysis and so on. That I think was a very important aspect of my work because it meant I had a foot in both camps from the beginning. That has influenced my whole career actually.
WB: Frank, could I just ask why Dr. Winn felt that you should come to Dr. Geroe.
FG: She was a recognised training analyst and he was not. He was an associate member of the British Society and not recognised for training, and I wanted a training.
WB: Had you known very much about her background, because I believe she was analysed by Balint.
FG: Yes. I found that out later that she was analysed by Balint.
WB: Were there any other trainee analysts amongst her analysands at the time you were doing it?
FG: Yes. There was Dr. A. R. Phillips also at Royal Park Receiving House when I was there and he was in training.
WB: Was he a Melbourne man?
FG: Yes. I think he went in a little after I did, but we were both in together about the same time. Then there was Arthur Meadows a psychologist. A brilliant man who was also a Rorshach expert. He was one of the first people in training. Also Janet Nield. She was in it too, she was an early one. But then Harry Southwood afterwards from Adelaide, so he was a regular too.
believe that people from Adelaide have always had to come to Melbourne for their training, only recently has there been training in Adelaide.
FG: There is training there now. And there lies a story for us.
WIl: How long were you in analysis with Clara Geroe?
FG: From 1941 to 1945, then I went into private practice. I had a great advantage in my training in psychiatry from Dr. J. K. Adey. He was a famous psychiatrist who had a great interest in Freud, and he knew his Freud backwards. He was a bit disappointed at the lack of curative results he found from psychoanalysis but that was his orientation, and he was the head of Royal Park Receiving House. So I had about four years with him and I consider myself very lucky because he taught me most of the psychiatry that I learned.
Where had he done his training?
FG: I'm not sure. He was originally English I think but had lived here since he was a boy. I don't know. I think he must have done his training here.
WB: Did you go into private practice as an analyst or as a general psychiatrist.
FG: Both. An interesting thing was that the first job I had when I came out of the Mental Hygiene Department was a job as school doctor to Janet Nield's school.
I spent a couple of years there examining the children every now and again.
When you say the school, what was that?
FG: It was called Koornong at Warrandyte, Victoria.
WB: She was a teacher?
FG: Yes. She was the headmistress of the school.
WB: And she did an analysis?
FG: She did a training analysis with Clara. It was run along modern lines. Not quite as radical as A. S. Neill or perhaps even as Preshill, but it was pretty free and easy where they encouraged the children to paint and so on. It was very good. It was during the war and it folded up eventually due to lack of funds as you might expect in those times.
Which suburb was it in?
FG: It was in Koornong. A boarding school, and perhaps it was also a day school. They had a whole lot of kids there and they were brought up in a very free and easy manner. It was a nice experiment and a pity it had to fold. She was a very interesting woman. She was delighted by poetry, and I think she even wrote poetry herself. She was a successful analyst and she eventually moved to Sydney.
Why did she do that?
FG: I don't really know, unless it was to join with the Sydney Institute. You see, Roy Winn helped to found the Sydney Institute for Psychoanalysis with some sort of a donation he gave. She moved there with her husband and family. Her son is now a leading architect there.
Was there still only the one analyst in Melbourne, by the time you had finished your analysis?
By the time I had finished my analysis there was another analyst there, Friedel
Fink was his Ile was married to a doctor who was a great one with the New Education Fellowship. She was also a doctor but she didn't bother to register here.
WB: Where were they from?
FG: They were from Germany.
WB: So they were refugees?
FG: That's right. He did his course here again and graduated as a doctor. He was a very pleasant man and we had a lot of interesting talks and seminars with them.
He came in 1939.
WB: He wasn 't an analyst when he came?
FG: Yes he was and a member of the Swiss Society. WB: A Jungian?
FG: No. A Freudian analyst. He came here and was recognised as a doctor where he worked in the Mental Hospital Department as a doctor. He was a neurologist as well, but he had his background in analysis. After he did his stint in that, he had to do a certain number of years I think, then he was able to practise in private as a psychoanalyst.
WB: Who would have been his analyst?
FG: I don't know.
WB: It's very interesting to backtrack to where people came from when they came here. Because what they brought with them was very important. So, Clara was really the first training analyst in Melbourne and then Dr. Fink?
FG: She was the first one that emigrated here.
WB: She would have come before 1939 then?
FG: She came later— m 1940.
WB: So she and Dr. Fink came about the same time.
FG: About the same time. She came in 1940 and I started my analysis in 1941.
WB: But there was no formal Institute or structure of any kind. ?
FG: No. When she came there was. The Institute was founded by a woman called
Lorna Trail who had been a patient of Dr. Albiston's, and I think of Dr. Paul Dane's. She was interested in analysis and she was going to give ten thousand pounds for the Foundation, but she changed her mind and she only gave fifteen hundred pounds for the founding of the Institute for Psychoanalysis at 111 Collins Street, opened by Judge Foster.
WB: A posh address in Collins Street.
FG: Absolutely. It was there for years and years. Unfortunately she decided in favour of buying a Spitfire for the British Airforce. So most of the money went there instead of to the Institute. Now let me see who else was in the first analytical group. I think I've told you all of them - Meadows, Albert Phillips, myself and Southwood. Albert also was a director of the Institute, and a number of psychiatrists acted as directors of the Institute although they weren't analysts themselves, so it actually got a good kick-off from that because they were leading psychiatrists, but the only one who was in analysis was Albert Phillips, who unfortunately died tragically rather early with a heart attack, so I don't think he ever actually finished his training.
W B: Really it sounds as though there was quite a positive climate in Melbourne.
FG: Oh yes. As a matter Of fact in the first few years Clara did a great job in her contacts with extra analytical organisations. She started a clinic for children. Children came to her from the Children's Court Clinic and she had a seminar for mothers and she had a general seminar too for those who were interested in psychoanalysis from a theoretical point of view — psychologists, social workers and psychiatrists. That went on for years and she had a very wide influence in Melbourne. She was eventually on the staff of the Royal Melbourne Hospital and she also lectured at the Psychology Department of the Melbourne University and she was very closely linked with Professor Oscar Oeser who was very analytically minded. Although he wasn't an analyst he fostered anything to do with analysis.
WB•; Can you tell me about your experience as an analysand with her. Your feelings about her techniques?
FG: The interesting feature about her technique as I see it was that she said very little in analysis, and there were long periods of silence, saying nothing, which I later became a bit critical of.
WB: It must have made you feel very anxious.
FG: Yes. She was very strict in her conduct of the analysis in that patients didn't meet each other or contact each other.
WI}: This was where?
FG: I l l Collins Street.
WIl: So she worked out of the Institute ?
FG: Oh yes. She had her rooms in there and also Paul Dane had his rooms there as well. There were at least two consulting rooms, a big waiting room and an office.
W Il: So it would be inevitable that you would meet people there ?
FG: Yes We used to joke about it because patients were shoved into cupboards while they were waiting — I'm exaggerating of course, but I think it was a bit overdone, the need for no contact. Paul Dane had his rooms there too. Paul Dane was a pillar of that period. He was one of the psychiatrists who was on the Board and he was a guiding light, in a sense that it was his enterprise, his energy that went into the founding of that Institute. It was he probably who influenced Miss Lorna Trail to make the donation to found it and to organise the opening of it with Judge Foster. Judge Foster was a progressive type of judge. I think he was probably a member of the Rationalist Association.
WII: There must have been a lot of progressive people around.
FG: Yes. There was another progressive organisation that was founded around the same time, that was the Rorshach Society. A lot of us were members of that, psychiatrists and psychologists. Dr. Hal Cook was a leading member of that. Dr. Hal Cook died recently, and Dr. Don Buckle was also a member. Unfortunately, for some reason it folded. It was a pity in a way because it was a meeting ground for analysts and psychologists and social workers who were interested in the Rorshach technique.
WB: Actually administering the Rorshach?
FG: Yes. I think it folded mainly because they founded the Psychological Society, and that rather took over a role I think. It was a pity it folded. I did a trainee course with them on Rorshach and strangely enough I took another course in recent years with Hal Cook. In his advanced years he put on another course at Prince Henry's Hospital. So I did two courses in it actually with many, many years between.
WB: And so you started your private practice. Did you have difficulty getting patients for analysis or was it quite well known?
FG: I had a general psychiatric practice as well as a psychoanalytic practice. This is perhaps a little unusual, but I had my little electroconvulsive box. I used to go with a nurse to patients' homes. They wouldn't dream of doing it now. I was also on the staff of St. Vincent's Hospital and the Royal Melbourne Hospital, so I had a lot of experience in general psychiatry and in the practice of it too. When I came out of the Mental Hospital Department I took a job with Reg S. Ellery who was a leading psychiatrist in Melbourne and he had a hospital full of patients and I looked after his patients for a few months as a general psychiatrist. I did a lot of interesting work for him.
WB: What hospital was that?
FG: Kahlyn. He had it full of his own patients. He did all sorts of therapy there. Electroshock therapy, and deep sleep therapy. He did a little bit of that. He did a lot of insulin therapy and he was a very able psychiatrist and I had a good experience with that.
WB: What about the theory, when you underwent your analysis and the Institute was set up, did the Institute at that stage have seminars and training?
FG: Yes. That was run by Clara Geroe herself. She had a big organisation. Many attended these seminars but then they were later on confined more to just the analysands, and we went through Freud's fundamental books very thoroughly. In fact I think more thoroughly than they have done in recent years. The way we followed up was this. One of us summarised the article that we needed to do — say the Three Contributions of Sexual Theory. We would summarise that and that would be discussed each night in the group and that's how we went on for years, and we went through all the important works of Freud that way.
WB: How often did you go to seminars?
FG: Two or three times a week. It was pretty hectic. I had analysis almost every day, four days a week. The technique was interesting. We had to keep an account of our own sessions. We didn't get any account. We had to keep an account of when we came and what days and then we paid her in cash. It was different to nowadays. Analysts usually give you an account at the end of the month.
WB: Why did she do that? Was there a special reason?
FG: That was the way she was brought up in Hungary and I think the idea was to have the practicality of handling the money side. I remember a funny instance with my work with Roy Winn. I had read a lot about analysis before I went to see him and I knew that Freud had taken a very practical view of' mat-
Oral Ilistory
ters. So I went to my first analytic session and I pulled a wad of notes out of my hip pocket and was about to peel it off, and he said 'Oh no, I'll give you an account at the end of the month'. I was following the Hungarian way.
What sort of feel about analytic work did you get in those days — obviously there were a lot of people interested in psychoanalysis, but psychoanalysis according to Freud or varieties?
There was another interesting thing about Clara on this point. She was rather hostile to any other system except Freud's. Mind you she gave us a very thorough grounding in Freud's works and Freud's type of analysis. But if a person was interested in Jung for instance, I think she rather discouraged it. I must say that Clara as an analyst was very much respected by the non-analyst psychiatrists, and it shows what sort of a person she was actually, because there is always this anti-analytical atmosphere, although many of the psychiatrists were anti-analysis they weren't anti-her, which is interesting.
WII: Was she married?
ICC, :
ICC, :
Yes. She had a son. Her husband was a travel agent or he became one.
Did she ever talk to you after your analysis about her own career, about her training, about the reasons she'd gone into analysis.
No. She never talked about that. It was rather interesting. She gives a story that is hearsay. Her husband had a special technique for the making of bricks and I did hear a story that she was allowed to come into Australia because of that, rather than her being an analyst. In fact, six Hungarian analysts tried to go to
New Zealand and they blocked them. What happened to them.
Well Clara came here. I don't know what happened to the others.
Why would they have wanted to go to New Zealand? Somewhere safe?
Maybe. They would have been away from the war zone.
She was Jewish ?
So was Freidel Fink. There could have been six. There are documents which show this. There is something I will try to get for you. I wrote an obituary of Clara and I wrote an obituary of Roy Winn. They would be worth looking at.
There is a lot of summarised stuff in that about the early days. WII: But very different to have actually experienced an analysis.
jCG:
ICC, :
Clara was under a big handicap here in that she was the only training analyst and she had to do the seminars as well as the personal analysis, but of course that's early days stuff. It was a heavy load for her to deal with it and rather difficult. However, she was recognised by the British Society as a training analyst.
What about her English, that must have been a bit of a problem?
Well, at first it was, but we got used to it. She said she learned more English from me than she did from any of her other candidates. Did she go back to Britain very much after the war?
14, 1 0/1/1 2, IVV5
JOG: She went back to various meetings. I remember her going way back in 1953 to a congress. Whether she went to any other congresses I can't quite remember. I don't know whether she did or not.
WB: Did she have any ongoing links with analysts in Europe or in Britain who came to Australia to teach?
FG: Yes. She was a great friend of Anna Freud's and they had correspondence and they also met occasionally. Later on another Hungarian analyst came out. Peto. He came here from Hungary and he was involved in the new Institute in Sydney. Roy Winn founded that as I mentioned before. He founded it with a donation. Peto was asked then to go to Sydney and he went. He found it a little bit of a problem here with competitiveness I think between Geroe and himself. And so I think he was happier to go there.
WB: Who would have trained Peto?
FG: It was the same man. Balint. They got on very well there and he trained a
woman doctor and she died fairly soon.
WB: Was there much interaction between the Sydney Institute and the Melbourne Institute at that stage?
FG: The only interaction was when we had our conferences every year. People would come from Sydney to Melbourne and Adelaide to Melbourne and sometimes we would go to Sydney. So we did that regularly. We always had conferences every year. We read papers and so on, so although it was a small organisation it was quite a fertile one.
WB: How many would there have been in Adelaide at that stage?
FG: At that stage I think there would have been only one in the early days. Later on there would have been some students from there. Then a man, Dr. Sam Stein, came from South Africa. You were interested in also the other analytical movements apart from analysts weren't you? Have you got some information on that?
Very little so far. I've tracked back to one of the first papers that was written. It was written about 1914 and was published I think in The Medical Journal of Australia.
FG: That's right. A man called Fraser.
WB: Psychoanalysis is not just a clinical science.
FG: No. There's an awful lot of interest in that actually. I went to England for a Kleinian training. Clara Geroe was against Kleinians. Roy Winn was all for her although he had no Kleinian experience. I may have caught it from him, but I doubt it because in my Mental Hospital work I saw a lot of Kleinian work observable in insane patients. So I think perhaps Roy's influence, although he didn't try to influence me at all, he just felt at one with it. But Clara was a bit against it. So several of us went to England for Kleinian experience. Clara didn't try to stop us but she certainly didn't encourage us. Definitely not. She was a bit on the discouraging side.
WB: Was that because of her relationship with Anna Freud?
FG: Quite likely, and also the theories didn't suit her. The theories of Klein struck a gong with Roy Winn and struck a gong with me. There was some intuitive feeling in both of us I think. The first to go over was Rose Rothficld then I went over, and Rose was over there for some years. She went to jiiY Jiii01YNt or I
went to her analyst, Rosenfeld. It was a good choice, I was lucky. She was with him and then I was with him and then Stan Gold went over for a couple of years. She was over there for years and years, I was over there for six years and then George Christie went over too. I think that's all that went over, much to the simmering jealousy of those who did their training and stayed here and didn't go abroad at all. That showed up in time.
W Il: Let's go back to your analysis with Rosenfeld.
WAG: Yes. It is very interesting that. It is really important about that. I was said to have very strong resistance or strong defences against depression. Clara Geroe told me that and I never had a great depression with her or Roy Winn. But if anyone got stuck into me and opened my depressive side up it was Rosenfeld. I got so depressed in my experience with him that I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I often wonder how he brought that about. I don't really know, but he did, and I was able to work through it. Looking back theoretically is rather interesting because I got polio when I was eighteen months old. I was running around like a rabbit at the time. I was in a manic state then. That was manic, always running around as a little kid, and of course I was suddenly struck down with polio in all four limbs and flat out on my back for six months. I was like an infant again. I was just thinking theoretically, I can't remember feeling depressed, but I must have been terribly depressed. I think Rosenfeld was able to bring that out in my analysis. I think that was why I was so terribly depressed.
W Il: That must have been very hard to cope with in England away from support systems, away from your family.
It didn't seem to be so, it was a strange thing. It was a depression certainly, but I seemed to cope alright. All I can remember now is that it was a horrible experience. If you were to ask me about my own analysis, the details, I couldn't tell you much about it really. I can tell you this, in the case of a dream, if you brought a dream he considered it just part of the material and he didn't go into the meticulous detail by detail analysis of a dream — so that now that dream was dealt with. None of that at all. It was just part of the experience you had and he would analyse part of the dream and link it up with what I was doing. There was no going through the dream from A to Z. He was very good in the way in which he dealt with me because I was an unusual type being paralysed because when I was on the couch I had to have some help up, I couldn't get up myself. He would always bring a chair around so that I could lean on it and get up. There was one rather horrible experience I had. He had a very slippery carpet outside in the foyer, just outside his room alongside the front door. I slipped on it and went head over turkey. I was down on the floor. He just did the same thing. He didn't have to lift me but he brought me a chair along and I struggled up. I got to my feet and I was all right then I was able to go out the door to my taxi. I thought it was excellent the way he did that because you don't often have to help your analysand up off the floor. He coped with that very well. I'm quite sure it was just as embarrassing for him as it was for me. Another interesting thing about this, it just shows how hard it is to come to grips with intimate
details towards your analyst. I think he had a Parkinsons condition, because there were several occasions — he had a tripping episode, just a little bit of a trip in his office on one occasion which is typical of the way a Parkinson trips. You couldn't miss it. Also he hurried out of the room on one occasion in a typical bent over Parkinson position. But why I'm mentioning it is I never mentioned that to him. Although I had this analysis for four or five years I was too embarrassed to even say to him — now of course I'd be able to — look old chap I'm sorry but I think you've got Parkinsons and I hope you're getting the right treatment for it. I may be wrong, but I think he had it, there were other things that I was told that confirm it. Two Australian analysts, they were over there too, said to me they used to go for walks along the beach occasionally with him and he'd fall over. That's in favour of Parkinsonism, because Parkinsons haven't the same adaptability of their legs and he had to be helped up. In his walking he was rather stiff. So I think he was under good treatment with Dopamine, which is an anti-Parkinsons drug and that kept him pretty well. Of course he had a very rigid back and I remember on one occasion I referred to some patient who referred to him apparently as having a bad back. He didn't like that. So I think from that I got the notion that I mustn't mention anything about this Parkinsons business. There was an element of reality in my not mentioning it because I think he was sensitive about it.
WB: I was just thinking about Margaret Little's analysis with Winnicott when she told Winnicott he was having a heart attack, he'd gone very grey, and she was right. She saved his life.
FG: Is that so. She mentioned it to him? Well that was good. Now I didn't have the same courage.
WB: It's interesting this protection of the analyst isn 't it?
FG: Protecting their feelings. There is an interesting thing about that. I had some very fine supervision over there in my Kleinian work. One was from Hans
Thorner. I helped my patients to talk about my physical troubles very readily. He thought that I overdid it. I don't think he was right. It's very hard for patients to say anything about their analyst even if there is nothing wrong at all.
So if you are an analyst who staggers into a room and sits down and staggers at the door it's going to have a devastating effect on a patient, and they just can't talk about it. I have always made it very clear to bring it out. He used to say that I did too much of it. But I don't think so. I think he's wrong. I think it was too much for him. I'm in a wheelchair now and there is very little comment ever made about my being in a wheelchair, very little, and I don't always hammer that because if you're in a wheelchair you look pretty normal. But if you're
walking staggering from side to side like I did, it's very obvious and very disturbing for patients. If you're going to analyse a person and you don't bring that up then it's not an analysis.
WB: I couldn’t agree more because you have to use it in interpretation, any aspect that a patient can see or hear about their analyst.
Another thing. Clara Geroe had to fight very hard to get me accepted as a student in London because I had polio at such an early age. It turns out how silly they can be but she had to fight hard. They had to think -— Frank Graham — polio in four limbs at eighteen months — he must be nuts, he couldn't be anything else. I think that is how they thought. But I was very lucky in my parents. My mother who was devoted and a gentle mother and a father who was a great rehabilitator and very good. He was a doctor of course. Another thing, he refused my being splinted early on. The old idea was splint them from morning until night to make sure their legs are straight to make sure there are no deformities. But he said no, let him crawl around on the ground as much as he can. Develop all the muscles he's got and then at the age of five or six we'll straighten his legs up and they got a hammer and a chisel and he had them smashed and straightened out and I've never looked back. That was lucky. I have treated by analysis another polio case who was mucked up by splints and braces at an early age and strangely enough at puberty he developed a sexual interest in his braces and his corsets and became quite perverted. However we got him out of that because it was a passing thing in his adolescence but it just shows how
unwise it is to go mucking around with splints too much in young polios. They are restricted enough and then you have to put splints on them. That's an interesting sideline on myself.
WII: It's terribly important for you and your work and this talk about the analyst's physical aspects I think is very important. All analysts have some physical problem. I think Kleinians are much more prone to work with the real, not to deny all that.
Absolutely.
When you were in England when you were doing your second analysis and attending seminars at the Institute in London, did you meet with other analysts?
Mainly I attended seminars of the Kleinian group. Kleinians had regular seminars Betty Joseph, Klein and a few others. I went to them. I had a grounding in the orthodox at home and I was keen to find out about Klein.
So who impressed you. What impressions did you come back to Australia with. Who do you think was your mentor as far as theory was concerned?
JOG: Well the best analyst I felt who supervised me was Sidney Klein. I like his methods very much indeed. Betty Joseph — I didn't care for her very much because she was a great one for writing everything down, Sidney Klein wouldn't let you write anything down. He'd say come and talk about your patient. I liked that. But you see different styles. They were all Kleinians.
When you think of your heritage, you came from Balint through to Klein.
Yes, that's very interesting. The interesting thing about Balint was this. He did a lot of group analysis the same as we do now ourselves and I was struck by the technique that he had was just like my own here. In group work. I was amazed. In fact I said to him, that's a Melbourne tradition all right. He laughed about that.
With Clara. I was amazed at how our techniques were so similar.
think about it, you went to England in 1969. So from 1945 to 1969 you were working as an analyst, practising as an analyst and as a psychiatrist and the theoretical influences really hadn't changed very much. Balint and Klein from 1945 to 1969 or more were still alive and well and working. What interests me listening to the continuity is that Australia really must have received psychoanalytic thinking quite easily, quite readily and quite quickly. I have always had the impression that Australia was much more closed than it obviously was.