Hamish Canham - Acquainted with the Night. Psychoanalysis and the Poetic Imagination

First published in 2003 by

Karnac Books Ltd.

118 Finchley Road,

London NW3 5HT

Reprinted 2006

Copyright 2003 Arrangement and Introduction Hamish Canham and Carole Satyamurti Copyright 2003 Chapter 1 Margot Waddell Copyright 2003 Chapter 2 Carole Satyamurti Copyright 2003 Chapter 3 Michael Maltby Copyright 2003 Chapter 4 Priscilla Green Copyright 2003 Chapter 5 Kate Barrows Copyright 2003 Chapter 6 Ronald Britton Copyright 2003 Chapter 7 Graham Shulman Copyright 2003 Chapter 8 Judith Edwards Copyright 2003 Chapter 9 Hamish Canham

The rights of all the above persons to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.

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A CLP. for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN-10: 1 85575 963 2 ISBN-13: 978 1 85575 963 3

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This book is dedicated to
Hamish Canhams wife and children
Hazel, Mabel and Oliver.

Thanks are due to the following:

Random House Books for permission to use the phrase acquainted with the night, from the poem of the same name by Robert Frost, as the title of the current volume; Carcanet Press for permission to reproduce The Broken Bowl by James Merrill;

Bloodaxe Books for permission to reproduce A Surprise on the First Day of School and Vertigo by Anne Stevenson, and Between the Lines and Passed On by Carole Satyamurti; The Journal of Child Psychotherapy (http://www.tandf.co.uk) for permission to reprint Priscilla Greens article, The Poet and the Superego;

Faber & Faber for permission to quote from Collected Poems by W. H. Auden and from Death of a Naturalist, Seeing Things, The Spirit Level, North, The Haw Lantern, all by Seamus Heaney.

S ince it was founded in 1920, the Tavistock Clinic has developed a wide range of therapeutic approaches to mental health that have been strongly influenced by psychoanalysis. It has also adopted systemic family therapy as a theoretical model and a clinical approach to family problems. The Clinic is the largest training institution in Britain for mental health, providing postgraduate and qualifying courses in social work, psychology, psychiatry, child, adolescent, and adult psychotherapy, as well as in nursing and primary care. It trains about 1,400 students each year in over 45 courses.

The Clinics philosophy is aimed at promoting therapeutic methods in mental health. Its work is founded on the clinical expertise which is the basis of its consultancy work and research. This series aims to make available the clinical, theoretical, and research work that is most influential at the Tavistock Clinic. It sets out new approaches in the understanding and treatment of psychological disturbance in children, adolescents, and adults, both as individuals and in families.

While this book was in the final stages of preparation, Hamish Canham fell ill. He died on 5 July 2003. His death is an immense loss to everyone who knew him.

The papers in Acquainted With The Night, each in its instructively thoughtful, scholarly, and subtle way, elaborate various contemporary perspectives on the relationship between psychoanalysis and poetry. As the editors make clear, the aim is not to psychoanalyse poets, but rather to examine the ways in which each medium, whether clinical or literary, explores and expresses the symbolic process as a means of understanding psychic reality.

Both generally and specifically in relation to individual poets, the authors illuminate the role of some central psychoanalytic concernsthose of containment and reparation, for example, and of mourning and lossin furthering reflection on the psychic determinants of the nature of imaginative life and of creativity. All the papers are lodged in the practice or experience of psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy rather than simply the theory, and dreams and childrens play are drawn on, as are the details of the way language is usedthat is, the meaningfulness of language itself. At once challenging and enriching, this volume takes its place in a long tradition within the Tavistock Clinic of drawing together aspects of cultural life with the working life of the Clinic.

Margot Waddell
Series Editor