ABSTRACT
What prompted us to write about Nina Coltart is a sense of awe at her willingness to talk about herself, which makes her a unique figure in the psychoanalytic world, where therapists are over-fearful of showing themselves outside the comfortable shelter of their consulting rooms. “The writings of analytical therapists are on the whole deliberately impersonal.... This feature has developed almost a quality of taboo” (Coltart, 1993a, p. 97). The experience of reading Coltart is very different from that of reading traditional psychoanalytic literature, because, in all her pages, she is wholly present, as a person. And she was wholly present in the clinical situation as well, as she clearly implied when she wrote that her aim when “doing psychotherapy” was “ ‘engaging with the patient’ in the fullest possible way” (p. 17).
