Archive of Elizabeth Spillius (1924-2016)

The following is an interim description which may change when detailed cataloguing takes place in future:

Papers relating to the career of Elizabeth Spillius, Kleinian scholar, psychoanalyst and anthropologist.

The collection includes correspondence with colleagues; correspondence with authors of journal articles relating to reviews of their submissions; patient case notes and correspondence with her patients; Spillius's research on Melanie Klein and Kleinian techniques, notably using the Melanie Klein Archive at the Wellcome Library; research notes on Freud; notes, research and lectures notes for Kleinian teaching, training and other courses in the UK and overseas carried out by Spillius; Spillius's own articles and related papers by other authors; material relating to conferences and seminars Spillius presented at and attended in the UK and overseas.

Also Spillus's PhD thesis 'The social organisation of London families', University of London 1956 (study of 20 East End families); typescripts relating to anthropological work in Tonga including genealogies; material relating to baby observations seminar 1960s-1970s; papers of anthropological study on the Groups choices made by students in the British Psychoanalytical Society late-1980s-2000; Spillius's memories of sociologist Erving Goffman; audio recordings of International Psychoanalytic Association Conference, Paris 2003; papers relating to her work for Encounters with Melanie Klein book (published 2007).

This collection covers many aspects of Kleinian theory, techniques and methods, notably projective identification, baby observations and child play, phantasy, separateness and perversion, envy, transvestitism, and Freudian concepts developed by Klein.

In the 1958 Spillius, accompanying her husband on a WHO project, carried out valuable anthropological field work in the Kingdom of Tonga, studying Tonga’s uniquely well-preserved Polynesian system of monarchy and kinship, in close collaboration with Queen Salote. Anthropology continued to strongly influence her study, work and teaching throughout her career during the course of which she became a leading psychoanalyst and one of the world's foremost scholars on the works of Melanie Klein.

Spillius edited a collection of papers in the two-volume Melanie Klein Today (1988). In addition, she wrote a number of valuable psychoanalytical papers, collected in Encounters with Melanie Klein (2007).

For many years Spillius was the Honorary Secretary of the Melanie Klein Trust, later becoming its archivist.

Elizabeth Bott Spillius died 4 July 2016.

For further biographies see the website of the Melanie Klein Trust and obituaries in The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Times.