NEVILLE SYMINGTON

Neville Symington, a member of the British and the Australian Society died on 3rd of December in Sydney. He was 82. Neville was internationally known and highly respected. He worked in the Adult Department of the Tavistock Clinic from 1977 until 1985 when he emigrated to Sydney. He served as Chairman of the Sydney Institute for Psychoanalysis and as President of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society He wrote twelve books, including one with his wife Joan, and many clinical papers. In 2013 he received the Sigourney Award.

Some novels begin as short stories and expand. To write about Neville’s extensive contributions is like condensing a novel into a short story. We often begin with the history of a person’s ideas and show how they develop over time, how they expand and interlock with others past and present. To convey a sense of the man, his interests, his qualities as a thinker, as a colleague, I have chosen four experiences that he spoke and wrote about, which serve as an introduction to him. They were, in my view, his north, south, east, west; he lived and worked within these reference points.

The first he detailed in a paper called The Personal Mystery of Being, written seven years ago. Neville was a Catholic priest before he became an analyst. He described his experience of listening to lectures on ontology. His lecturer was a man called George. Within a few minutes of hearing George begin his first lecture, Neville heard a new voice. This is how he described his reaction.
'He was talking from his own soul...in that very first lecture my heart opened to what he was revealing. There had been a yearning in me from my earliest days to understand the world in which I found myself. Now here at last I had found someone who wanted to understand the universe in the deepest way...I sighed with inward relief. I had arrived home. I had found what I had been looking for all my life...at the end of that year [of four lectures a week] a foundation had been laid in my heart and mind which has never left me.’

Neville had grasped two truths. First that there is reality, there is Being. The second that he exists and that he had a beginning on the day he was born and would have an end on the day of his death. ‘A light shone in my mind’, he said, ‘the moment when I saw the being of the universe in the mirror of my own soul. This is not the sort of thing that anyone can teach you. George did not teach it to me; he spoke of it and I, in a moment of wonder, suddenly grasped it. It [was] an act of inner creation. Once seen it is never lost. It is part of my own being. I believe that I grasped being, because George had grasped it in his own heart. Because it was a personal possession for him, or, more accurately, he was personally possessed by it, so I was able to grasp it.’


The second experience was his analysis with John Klauber. Again, Neville’s words.
‘I was analysed by John Klauber. I came to him very definitely ill and in a state of inner and outer disarray, and I emerged from analysis some seven and a half years later a changed person. Although I contributed to this result, I know that his mediation of the analytic process was crucial. For Klauber it was the truth that healed. In the introduction to his book Difficulties in the Analytic Encounter he says, “I believe that truth is the great corrective by which, with the analyst’s help, patients heal themselves.”

‘When I think of my experience with John Klauber and read through some of his papers, I am struck with amazement at his stress upon the person…I have become more and more interested in the nature of the human person. What is a person? What is different about a person from a mere individual? Is it that in the person there is an inner imaginative and spontaneous response whereas in the individual this is lacking? This imaginative response occurs at a deeper stratum of the personality than that of language. Klauber’s conversational response was the linguistic manifestation of something much deeper. I believe that emotional reciprocity is what creates the person. After this, the two most valuable principles that I have retained is his instinctive respect for the freedom of the individual and his oft stated dictum that the analyst’s first job is to make emotional contact with the patient.’

The third experience Neville outlined in his paper The Patient Makes the Analyst. The English analyst Nina Coltart once said: ‘By fifty you have the face you deserve and by fifty you are the analyst you deserve to be. (She was estimating qualifying at forty and then working for ten years). Neville knew that when he graduated, he was an analyst in name. He took on a patient and after seeing her for many years he said, ‘I have no doubt whatever that I became an analyst through the treatment of this patient.’

He learned much from that patient. In my view he became a wordsmith. He took as much care and thought with how he spoke to her as a poet does who writes within strict form. Because of anxiety, or ignorance, or adherence to theory or dogma, the analyst can make a fundamental mistake. He installs his authority in the mind of the patient, or attempts to do so. This goes nowhere. Or makes the matter worse. The anxiety, ignorance and dogmatic adherence are really protections used by the analyst to avoid experiencing his own psychotic parts. These parts that we fear are in fact the source of the greatest riches. The fourth experience leads on from the third. While conducting this analysis, Bion who then lived in California came to London and Neville saw him for supervision. Bion, Neville said, ‘had that rare gift of being able to make comments without interfering with the me-ness of interpretations.’ With his patient Neville was finding out that, as he put it, ‘The sensitive intuition of a psychotic patient…knows instantly when I am speaking what I think and when I am speaking what I have been told’. Bion could emotionally and imaginatively place himself in the presence of Neville and his patient in Neville’s consulting room. He spoke of what he saw and offered it to Neville for him to see if it was useful.

I think, in Bion, Neville found another George. A man who, when he applied himself to his area of interest, allowed it to deeply impact on his soul. He thought and spoke from a place deep within himself.

I first met Neville in 1979. I attended his lectures at the Tavistock Clinic in London. His lectures offered stepping stones, into the past, into the future, into an internal world, into a world of ideas. (Those lectures became his first book The Analytic Experience.) I felt something then that would take some time to articulate. It is this: for a person, freedom and creativity go hand in hand. Freedom is not license. Freedom is the removal of constraints that others or circumstances have placed on our minds, but more often the constraints we have placed on our own minds, constraints we have grown to live with and have forgotten how they got there. Finding them, articulating them and their removal requires emotional engagement with another human being.

I began to learn those things in Neville Symington’s presence forty years ago.

The English writer William Hazlitt said, ‘Most men’s minds are like musical instruments out of tune. Touch a particular key and it jars and makes harsh discord with your own.’ Neville knew he needed to keep his own mind in tune. His lectures and his twelve books often ploughed the same ground, going deeper, keeping the mind in tune, keeping the mind free. He offered space, for exploration, for conversation, for further thought. He encouraged you to move outside and beyond psychoanalytic ideas, to philosophy, to literature, to art, to science, to anything that caught your interest.

I am grateful to have had as a lecturer, as a colleague and a friend, a man who, with feet firmly on the ground could point to minute changes of light and shadow inside the mind of another human being, a man who could rise up and take a bird’s eye view, a man who if he grabbed hold of his opinions too tightly and required forceful challenge, could, respectfully release his grip, a man who each day marveled at the simple, mysterious fact of possessing precious life, a man who, as his life receded, spoke openly of gracefully relinquishing that life. I know I speak for many when I say I’ll miss him.

Maurice Whelan
Sydney, Australia.
Member of The Australian Psychoanalytical Society
Fellow of The British Psychoanalytical Society
mwhelanpsychoanalyst@icloud.com

Obituary by Dr James Telfer

Neville Symington 1937-2019. Australian and international psychoanalysis mourns the passing of one of the most distinguished practitioners and publicists in their discipline. He was Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society, Member of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society, Honorary Member of the Israeli Psychoanalytical Society and Member of the Australian Psychological Society. Neville had continued to teach and write until his death in Sydney from a short illness at the age of 82.

He was born in Portugal and was educated at Ampleforth College, Yorkshire, where he was a boarder from age eleven. He studied philosophy and theology at St Edmunds College 1958-1964 and psychology at Brunel University 1968-1974. He was a clinical psychologist at the Tavistock Clinic from 1978, and undertook analytic training with John Klauber. He married Joan Cornwell, also a distinguished psychoanalyst, who was the love of his life. They emigrated to Sydney 1986.

His achievements in psychoanalysis in London proved seminal in his professional development. He was chairman of the Psychology Discipline at the Tavistock Clinic. He published prolifically with more than twenty books and many journal articles. His creativity was not of the printed word alone but of his personal presence in the international psychoanalytic community. His achievements came from connectedness. He spoke with outstanding clarity, expressive of inner freedom, even when imploded upon by the commotion of groups.

A year after arriving in Sydney Neville became Chairman of the Sydney Institute for Psychoanalysis and remained so until 1993. He was President of the Australian Psychoanalytical Association 1999-2002. He galvanised these organisations into developing a coherent structure. He began outreach programmes to publicise psychoanalysis with public lectures and seminars open to all. He dispelled the image of psychoanalysis as an exclusive club with anachronistic dogmas. Psychoanalysis in Australia came of age through his work while he remained a citizen of the world, giving lectures and supervision in Britain, Brazil, Israel, Poland, Portugal, Germany, India, Japan, New Zealand, USA and Denmark.

Neville received the high accolade of the Sigourney Award in 1993, along with Haydee Feimberg and Ron Britton. Neville was encouraged by this recognition. He felt that he had chosen a lonely path with his work on Narcissism: A New Theory in 1993. He wrote this book in an original way: conducting seminars and then writing, informed by the group process.

The scope of Bion’s work informed the thinking of Joan and Neville. They noticed that Bion’s central concern was the life of the mind, how thoughts emerge from what is not a thought yet. This is a contrast to many analytic writers, including the younger Neville, whose focus had been on psychopathology, determined by drives and/or environment. Neville addressed narcissism as the outcome of an unconscious choice at the deepest level of the mind. The choice is whether turn to or turn away from that which is life giving. Turning away from the life giver is Neville’s definition of narcissism. It is prototypical trauma. There is an existential choice between surrendering to trauma as to Fairbairn’s internal saboteur or to Bion’s basic assumptions, or, instead turning to emotional contact with the other.

Neville was critical of both religious and psychoanalytic dogmatism. He thought psychoanalysis had failed to address the spiritual understanding of meaning. He regarded organised religion as having failed to recognise the predicament of the person who can say “I.” The question asked by Neville is how to turn the individual into a person free of dogma. Neville said “when someone cannot think their own thoughts they are not free.”

Neville kept psychoanalysis on the move. We could never guess what he would say next. It was a quality of newness because what he said was his own free response to the moment. Throughout his life he kept moving away from the established to that which is yet to be, that which is emerging into thought. He was always a questing exile.

Neville is survived by Joan and their two sons David and Andrew.

Further tributes ...

Dear Dr Najeeb,
I’m writing to you from Kraków Poland (Well actually from a short holiday in Croatia at this moment)... I found your issue 16 of psychoanalysisdownunder in my e-mail inbox and was very moved by all the memoirs of Neville. I want to share with you what I wrote for our Polish Psychoanalytical Society page, as well as add some personal thoughts. First of all thank you for this journal and your heartfelt engagement. As I wrote in my memoir of Neville I first met him in 2005. He came to a small conference we were organizing at that time in Kraków, I was a young psychiatrist who was staring his psychoanalytic training and dreamed of just simply being an analyst... by chance Neville happened to be in Europe at that time and it was a total surprise he agreed to come. I knew his book The Making of a Psychotherapist and had heard about him from Jan Malewski, a former Polish analyst who was our supervisor who attended his lectures at the Tavitock... The Conference was on narcissism and I was one of the presenters. What I want to tell you that during the coffee break Neville gave me a DVD of his lectures from Sydney (what was to become A Healing Conversation) and told me that it’s very well recorded and chaired by an analyst he valued very much . He stressed that he thought you were one of the best analysts he had ever met. My curiosity was awoken and during the years of my training I listened to those discussions many times while traveling by train to Warsaw for my analysis and training (there was no analyst in kraków at that time and the only training was possible in Warsaw). I’m sure the climate you both had shared there during those meetings had a huge impact on my development as a therapist and clinical discussion participant. Neville came back to Kraków a few times and was our key lecturer on our annual Society conference in 2016. That was the last time I saw him, with Avner Bergstein. We stayed in email contact over the years and he was always very helpful and inspiring.

Neville would come to us from Israel and then fly to Denmark. Poland found itself on the Neville map, between Israel and Denmark. He later told me he felt traveling and transforming from a Kohutian climate he felt in Israel, to a strong Kleinian one in Poland. It made him very interested how the climate could change... We have a strong Kleinian tradition in Poland and definitely Neville freed us from certain dogmas. His book on narcissism was published in Polish and there are seminars where his papers are discussed and his thoughts live very much in us.

I hope this letter finds you well in these difficult days of the pandemic. In Europe the situation is very unstable and we are mostly working remotely. This too was something I learned from Neville, that we may use various techniques of communication and Skype was one of them. He had a great sense of using this medium and having in mind all the limitations.

Best regards from Europe.
Bartosz Puk
Polish Psychoanalytical Society

Dear Dr. Shahid Najeeb,

It is my great pleasure to receive such a wonderful journal, Psychoanalysis Downunder. I vividly remember your late colleague Neville Symington had visited Japan and had a very impressive lecture at the Psychoanalytic Congress in Tokyo. So that, the journal attracts me a lot. I will introduce Psychoanalysis Downunder to all my colleagues in our Society.

Thank you again.

My best wishes

Kunihiro Matsuki
President,
The Japan Psychoanalytic Society

Dear Tim

I am writing in my role as President of the Australian Association of Group Therapists at the time of Neville Symington’s death.

Neville has touched so many of us in the broader Australian psychoanalytic community through his lectures, teaching and books. His passion was always palpable whenever one encountered him. He will be missed throughout Australia and the world.

His loss must be acutely felt by his friends and colleagues in APAS and with this in mind I would like to extend the heartfelt condolences of the membership of the AAGP to the membership of APAS.

Kind regards

Dr Peter Hengstberger
Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

Dear All,

Psychoanalysis recently lost a powerful voice. (Vale) Neville Symington (1937-2019) was a prolific writer, esteemed analyst, and beloved friend of IPI. He authored many publications and 12 books, including "Narcissism: A New Theory," "A Pattern of Madness," "The Making of a Psychotherapist," and "The Psychology of the Person," to name a few. A proud recipient of the 2013 Sigourney Award for his contributions to psychoanalysis worldwide, Neville held various prominent leadership positions in such institutions as the Middle Group of British Psychoanalysts, the Tavistock Clinic, and
the British and Australian Psychoanalytic Societies.

Many of us at IPI share fond reminiscences of Neville whose work was featured in most of our syllabi. He presented in the Master Speaker videoseminar series (2013) and he was the keynote speaker at two of IPI's weekend conferences: "Why has Psycho-Analysis Lost the Person?" in 2011, and "Narcissism and Spirituality" in 2007. Neville supported our distant learning approaches to treatment and training, himself a regular user of videoconference to supervise and work with patients. I remember Neville as a warm, humble, witty, and accessible scholar and teacher who taught by evocative clinical examples and engaging stories. For those who are not familiar with him, I recommend that you take a look at his website to experience his words and his philosophical outlook about our limitations as healers. Upon his acceptance of the Sigourney award, he said, "... a central creative agent constitutes the core of the personality and not a package of instinctual drives. I think the struggle for survival is not the over-arching motivational principle that guides people. I believe that a desire for freedom is a prime mover in human affairs."

He will always remain in our minds as a treasured analyst as well as an IPI friend, colleague, supervisor, and presenter. With these words of remembrance, I offer my warm condolences to all those who are grieving the loss of Neville Symington.

Sincerely,
Caroline Sehon IPI Director

President, Australian Psychoanalytic Society.

Dear Colleagues, On behalf of the Israeli Society, please convey to your members our heartfelt condolences on the death of Neville Symington.

Neville was a frequent and regular visitor to Israel and was an honorary member of our society. He spent significant periods with us, in which we benefited from his wisdom, generosity, his profound humanity and his unfaltering drive for personal and professional freedom and independence.

We share with you the pain of the loss of a highly valued friend and colleague.

Sincerely,
Judith Triest,
President, Israel Psychoanalytic Society.

On behalf of the IPA Administration and Board, we would like to express our deepest condolences for the loss of our esteemed colleague and IPA member, Neville Symington. Our sincere thoughts are with his family and friends and the Australian Psychoanalytical Society members and candidates at this sad time. I knew Neville personally and share the pain of this great loss. He was a wonderful man, highly respected and esteemed not only for his important contributions to psychoanalysis but also for the warmth and generosity of spirit he brought to those fortunate enough to have known him. He will be sadly missed. With your permission, we will post the announcement in the obituaries section on the IPA website.

Respectfully
Dr Virginia Ungar
President IPA