Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows the ultimate application of the diagnostic category to a seldom-addressed subject in the psychoanalytic literature: that of abused women and their abusers. In February 2015, the Donald Meltzer Development Fund organized an international conference at the Tavistock Clinic in London with the attendance of 120 participants. This conference was the response to a frequently expressed wish for a reunion in which Meltzer's ideas, teachings, and clinical insights could be pored over, where exchanges could be—as indeed they were—stimulating, and which could provide a place in which his work could be celebrated among colleagues from all over the world. The final contribution from the conference shows the vicissitudes of claustrum patients, with a focus on battered women.