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The appearance of these three volumes from different geographical locations presenting the clinical and theoretical thinking of Donald Meltzer, a prominent Kleinian psychoanalyst who died in 2004, reminds me, as a reviewer, of a trend that seems to be dominant in determining how many psychoanalysts think about theory. Namely, that psychoanalysts, by nature and history are inclined to be followers, who shift their loyalty from one prominent psychoanalytic theorist to another starting initially with Freud but moving on to Klein, Bion, Winnicott, and French psychoanalytic theorists like Laplanche and Lacan, always seeking the wisdom of a presumably superior analyst to follow, one who knows the true nature of psychoanalysis, something that has been unseen by Freud and then becomes a new theory of choice. While it is acknowledged that these new theorists are indebted to Freud, this can easily be seen as a superficial endorsement rather than real loyalty or valuing of Freud's version of psychoanalytic theory. Starting with Melanie Klein, revisionist theorists have criticized and dismissed Freud for not starting early enough in the infant's life, for, in their view not going deep enough into the primitive infantile mind. By insisting that the experience of the nursing infant and even of the fetus in utero is determinant of the psychic phenomena that we treat in children and adults and that these claimed fantasies of infancy can be accessed in the transference these theorists and their followers have created an approach to patients in psychoanalysis that aims at connecting the analyst with the infantile sexual fantasy life supposedly present in all human beings, the supposed universally present psychotic core within all individuals no matter how healthy and functional they might superficially appear to be.
Meltzer, while never achieving the following or acclaim equal to other prominent revisionist theorists, was popular enough to inspire regular, recurring clinical seminars