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Book Reviews |
Roy Schafer, Ph.D., notes in his epilogue to The Contemporary Kleinians of London that he has held an interest in Kleinian theory and writings since the 1950s. One assumes that Dr. Schafer's well-known autonomous and original thinking allowed him to transcend the political forces within the field that operated to suppress exposure to Kleinian thinking in many of us who obtained psychoanalytic training in the United States in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. Schafer emphasizes throughout the book that Kleinian thinking is firmly grounded in the thought of Sigmund Freud; he emphasizes this point by referring to the contemporary British Kleinians as "Kleinian Freudians."
Melanie Klein seems to have seen herself as Sigmund Freud's spiritual if not biological daughter.1 Her theories of early infantile experience arose directly from the foundations of object relations theory found in Mourning and Melancholia. The contemporary Kleinians of London ("these Kleinians," as Schafer calls them, to distinguish them from their South American brethren) seem to have expunged from their perspective most of the colorful but highly controversial concepts that Melanie Klein espoused and that apparently gave American psychoanalysts such pause. The U.S. vision of Klein was of a non-physician with questionable clinical bases for her ideas (read "wild speculations") who was destroying the psychoanalytic scaffolding that the much more conservative Anna Freud was staunchly upholding in the decades after her father's illness and death. Sigmund Freud's apparent determination not to undercut his daughter by agreeing with Klein must have been tormenting to a talented and ambitious woman whose psychoanalytic birth was through the (originally) mainline giants, Abraham and Ferenczi.
As Schafer effectively demonstrates in this collection of essays (most previously published), the contemporary descendants of the grande dame seem almost to stick to the party line. Steadfast interpretation of the transference from an objectivist stance is their main focus, and this is certainly ego psychologically and psychoanalytically fundamental. To be sure, little or no attention is given to the Oedipus complex, and one wonders if these Kleinians are not inclined to reduce even straightforward neurotic formations to their core concept of the dyadic struggle to achieve the depressive position.
On the other hand, seasoned psychoanalysts and beginning psychotherapists alike are increasingly faced with patients who manifest serious disturbances in the borderline and narcissistic spheres and who present formidable technical problems for the therapist. Fundamental Kleinian concepts such as projective identification and containment, splitting, the paranoid-schizoid position, and pathological organizations, elusive though they may be in definition, are helpful in unlocking the "stuckness" and the negative therapeutic reactions that beset many a therapy and leave the therapist gasping for a breath of understanding.
The Contemporary Kleinians of London contains 18 essays written by 12 authors. Only two chapters are original; many are printed with permission of the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, which of course was founded by Ernest Jones in 1920 and whose pages saw much of the original Kleinian thought unfold. One might quibble with an expensive volume containing so much previously published work, but Schafer has chosen these essays with care (and with clear regret over space limitations and omissions) and with attention to the use of detailed clinical descriptions to demonstrate the elusive concepts and the way these Kleinians do their work. Schafer adds a personal introduction to each essay and thereby serves as a guide for the uninitiated. Hanna Segal and Betty Joseph, perhaps the most widely known of the contemporary Kleinians, contribute two and three chapters, respectively. Irma Brenman Pick is here, as are John Steiner and eight others. Schafer encourages the reader to give careful study to the case material and to read beyond this sampler. The reviewer found Grosskurth's biography of Klein a helpful companion volume.1
The Contemporary Kleinians of London is not an easy read for the Kleinian novice, but such a reader will emerge from the experience with a wish to read and know more. The dark veil imposed by fear of Klein has been lifted, and her ideas, becoming better known, will now be explored for their usefulness and truth value. Roy Schafer has helped lift the veil.
Footnotes
Dr. Nash is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and director of psychiatric residency training, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN.
References
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