ABSTRACT
I knew Nina for a good many years, from 1975 until her death, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to write about her. I can say that with confidence, although I am aware of a degree of hesitation in my claiming to know her. I feel I knew her well, although there is much that I did not, and do not, know about her life, and I did not have an ordinary social relationship with her. “Knowing” someone has a context, and the defining context of our relationship was that I was in analysis with her for ten years. I was first a patient, an analysand, and then, after a break of a year, I went back to her for my training analysis. After qualifying as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, I moved out of London and then saw nothing of Nina for many years, although we maintained a sparse correspondence. It was more than a decade after the ending of our analytic relationship that we again met, in a professional context, and had what might be called some ordinary conversations. So my knowing Nina is particular, constrained, and boundaried, but also curiously intimate.
