Melanie Klein's extension of Freud's ideas - in particular her explorations into the world of the infant and her emphasis on the complex interactions between the infant's internal world of powerful primitive emotions of love and hate and the mothering that the infant receives - were greeted with skepticism but are now widely accepted as providing an invaluable way of understanding human cognitive and emotional development. Klein's insights shed light on persecuted states, guilt, the drive to create and to repair; they also provide the clinician with a theory of technique.
Klein's work has inspired the work of psychoanalysts around the world. Her concept of projective identification with its implications for the understanding of countertransference made a significant impact on her followers and on psychoanalysts in other countries and from other schools of thought. Further exploration of these ideas has led to greater understanding of how change occurs in psychoanalysis and has inspired a large literature with a particular focus on technique.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements
About the Editors and Contributors
Introduction to the Book
I Historical Frame
Garvey, P. and Long, K. Melanie Klein: her main ideas and some theoretical and clinical developments
II Theory and Practice
Abel Hirsch, N. Some detail on Bion’s concept of container/contained
Bell, D. The Development of the Psychoanalytic Idea of Psychosis
Blass, R. The Teaching of Klein: Some Guidelines for Opening Students to the Heart of Kleinian Thinking and Practice
Brenman Pick, I. Lurching between longing and destruction
Brearley, M. The sense of self: generosity or narrow mindedness?
Britton, R. The mountains of primal grief
Cassorla, R. Dreams, Symbolization, Enactment
Clarkson, L. Autistic Features Encountered in the World of "As If"
Feldman, M. Responding to Narcissism
Frank, C. Getting to know splitting as an organizing unconscious
phantasy then and today
Mawson, C. The projective process and the two positions today
O’Shaughnessy, E. Reparation: Waiting for a concept
Paul, K. Mourning and the Development of Internal Objects
Pieczanski, A. Some thoughts on addiction and perversion in
psychoanalysis: theory and technique
Rocha Barros, E. Evolutions in Kleinian Inspired Clinical Practice
Roth, P. "I used to think you were wonderful": the persecution/idealization cycle of melancholia
Steiner, J. Illusion, Disillusion and Irony in Psychoanalysis
Weiss, H. Primitive reparation and the repetition compulsion in the
analysis of a borderline patient
Zeavin, L. The perfect is the enemy of the good: On idealization and
self-Idealization
III. Work with Children
Alvarez, A. Paranoid/schizoid position or paranoid and schizoid positions?
Jackson, J. Balancing on a Tightrope of Mania: a Precarious Normality
Rustin, M. Psychoanalytic work with an adopted child with a history of
early abuse and neglect
Williams, G. "At times when I see your face thinking, I am thinking as well": A Plea for an Organising Object
IV. Applied Contributions
Rockwell, S A Perfect Poem of Tears: Grieving as Depicted in Federico Garcia Lorca’s Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias
Rusbridger, R. Narcissism and ugliness in King Lear
Taffler, R. &
Eshraghi, A. Hedge Funds as Phantastic Objects: A Psychoanalytic
Perspective on Financial Innovations
Weintrobe, S. Communicating psychoanalytic ideas about climate change:
a case study
About the Author :
Penelope Garvey is a training analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Her first training was as a clinical psychologist and she has worked as a consultant psychotherapist in the NHS.
Kay Long, PhD, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New Haven, CT. She is an Associate Clinical Professor in the Psychiatry Department of the Yale School of Medicine and a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis.
Review :
"The ideas Melanie Klein developed on the basis of Freud’s work have now been taken up in many ways and in most centres of psychoanalysis throughout the world. As Klein often said she felt she had moved the psychoanalytic focus to ‘deeper layers’ of the unconscious. In these Chapters, the extraordinary ramifications of her explorations can be seen in greart detail. In some ways it re-treads the territory of Elizabeth Spillius’ two-volume work on Melanie Klein Today, in the 1980s; but, this new work brings us up to date with the sharp end of Kleinian thinking 30 years later. Klein’s own writing being dense and repetitive has always been difficult to master, and indeed sometimes disturbing. But this collection of original papers by a huge range of psychoanalysts demonstrates how rewarding the effort to understand these ideas has been. These Chapters do not just demonstrate the versatility of the ideas, but also comprise debates about issues not yet finalised, and for the next generation to venture into. If there is a public view that psychoanalysis has run its course in intellectual life, then this book gives the lie to that. Its Chapters confirm that Freud started the radical discovery of the human mind, but his results have nevertheless benefitted from others adventurously pushing on with his project." --R. D. Hinshelwood, Professor Emeritus of Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, and Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society
