ABSTRACT
In a note dated 3 July 1997 and appended to the introduction of my Freely Associated: Encounters in Psychoanalysis with Christopher Bollas, Joyce McDougall, Michael Eigen, Adam Phillips, and Nina Coltart (1997), I cited my withdrawal from the manuscript of the original “sketch” of my encounter with Dr Coltart written prior to her death by suicide on Tuesday, 24 June 1997. In the aftermath of that sudden and sad event, “reflections of a different sort”, I noted, “now seem in order”. If my memory serves me well, only three people had read that sketch submitted for publication with the rest of the manuscript. One of them was Nina Coltart herself who, in a handwritten letter to me dated 28 January 1997, gave her unequivocal stamp of approval both to the final version of our interview as well as to my highly idiosyncratic and potentially shocking impressions of our time together. Convinced, as I remain, that Nina had intended our interview to serve and survive her as a final testament of sorts, and entrusted, as I was, with the dissemination of its contents, the invitation to contribute to this commemorative volume occasions that I herewith make public, for the first time, those paragraphs originally penned for Freely Associated.
