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In recent years, American analysts have been dramatically extending the boundaries around what they consider acceptable analytic theory. In some psychoanalytic circles, however, although not in all, they have remained notably reserved about including Kleinian theory and clinical method. There was an illustration of this skeptical view in the late 1990s, when a well-known British Kleinian gave a clinical
presentation at an eminent institute of the American, to the general disapproval of discussant and audience. What accounts for the continued hesitation of an important segment of the ever more pluralistic American psychoanalytic community to credit Kleinian conceptualization and praxis?
Beyond the fact that Kleinian conceptions and clinical methods markedly diverge from ego analytic ones (see Zetzel 1956; she was one of the few American analysts to have had extensive firsthand experience in England with Kleinian thought and practice), at least two other influences continue to dispose some American analysts to experience Kleinians and their ideas as “other.” The political struggles between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein that culminated in the Controversial Discussions in London in the early forties cemented their opposition to Kleinian innovations and foreclosed their potential responsiveness to them. Moreover, the geographical divide separating the United States and London, the heartland of creative Kleinian activity, means that the three pillars of analytic apprenticeship—personal (training) analysis, supervised (control) analyses, and didactic learning (coursework)—are only very limitedly available, in their Kleinian incarnations, in the United States. Authentic “feel” for the Kleinian perspective requires immersion in and experience of its clinical efficacy, which cannot be achieved via the occasional Kleinian lecture and workshop. The literature consequently remains the avenue most continuously available to the American analyst who wants to absorb Kleinian unders