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There is no surprise that in Susan Kavaler-Adler's most ambitious book to date, she focuses on the two most iconic and influential psychoanalytic developmental theorists of the mid twentieth century In her past work, such as Mourning, Spirituality and Psychic Change: A New Object Relations View of Psychoanalysis (Kavaler-Adler, 2003) and Anatomy of Regret (Kavaler-Adler, 2013), she has established herself as one of the most regarded interpretive psychoanalytic biographical theorists working today. The Klein-Winnicott Dialectic serves up an amalgam of biography, clinical case material, psychoanalytic principles and the powerful interpersonal and inter-psychological encounter of the two great minds of mid twentieth century psychoanalysis, who were locked in a battle that would define no less the future of psychoanalytic theory and practice for generations to come. Further the book reaches new understanding, dissecting the often poignant and turbulent narratives of each theorist, and how their respective psychoanalytic positions emerge from a cauldron of family secrets, strained relationships, culture and personal disposition.
From Freud's days, the psychoanalytic movement was built on a dialectic which is akin to an argument. I believe that such dialectic, in part, emerges from understanding that psychoanalysis is not a “hard science,” but it is more of a philosophical/healing arts tradition, based on speculative assessment built from observations of countless consultations with patients. Despite his own observations and case work, Freud held fast to a mostly biologically based drive theory of human motivation. The legacy of his model is best exemplified in the work of Karl Abraham, Ernst Jones, Freud's daughter Anna, and though significantly modified, in the work of Melanie Klein.
If there is a fault in Kavaler-Adler's work is that it may be too ambitious, couching the interpretive competing biographies with a thorough review of both theorists' key principles, and then