Nina Coltart was a British psychoanalyst, psychotherapist, and essayist.
Background
Nina Coltart was born on November 21, 1927 in Shortlands, Kent, United Kingdom. Her father was a medical doctor and her mother was a housewife. In 1940 she and her younger sister Gill were evacuated to Cornwall, where they lived with their maternal grandmother and a nanny who, years before, had cared for Coltart’s mother. Coltart’s parents died in a train wreck under blackout conditions that year on their way to visit their daughters.
Education
Coltart attended Sherborne School for Girls and from there went to Somerville College, Oxford, where she read English and Modern Languages. She applied to St. Bartholomew's Hospital's Medical College, where she was the first female editor of the Barts Journal. She earned a medical degree there.
Career
Nina began work as a psychiatrist in St. Bartholomew's Hospital's Medical College. Soon after Coltart began training in psychoanalysis. In her training analysis she was analyzed by Eva Rosenfeld. Coltart began her private practice in London in 1961. She became a Full Member in 1969, and a training analyst in 1971.
Later, she worked at various hospitals under the National Health Service. After qualifying for the British Psycho-Analytical Society as an associate member in 1964, she took on the responsibilities of training analyst and supervisor seven years later. She also directed the London Clinic of Psycho-Analysis for ten years. A Theravada Buddhism practitioner, she helped establish a Buddhist monastery near Petersfield, England.
Nina lectured widely, traveling to the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, and Israel. Coltart was Director of the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis for ten years and Vice President of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She retired in 1994 to her house in the country in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire. She also wrote several books.
Religion
Nina Coltart considered herself to have a religious temperament. Having been a devout practising Christian from her late teens, in her late twenties she stopped believing in God. This led to a spiritual search and she found Buddhism. She supported the monastery at Great Gaddesden in Hertfordshire
Views
Nina theorized that there are distinct similarities in the transformation of the self that occurs in both psychoanalysis and Buddhism.
Personality
Coltart was known as an enthusiastic, warm, and encouraging mentor. She took on especially difficult patients and wrote "in language devoid of jargon, dogma, or pretentiousness" about her cases. In spite of her social skills, her light-heartedness and sense of humour, Nina Coltart was a very private person. She always described herself as valuing and enjoying living alone.
Quotes from others about the person
...one of the great training analysts.