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In 1957, at the culmination of her career, Melanie Klein introduced the stunning concept of primary envy in the monograph “Envy and Gratitude.” Her theory of an innate, universal destructive force, directed against the mother from birth, drew immediate fire. For some analysts this idea of a tragic flaw was a sober but realistic view of human nature; others found it too pessimistic to accept. Klein's conviction amid the ensuing dissent set the course for subsequent generations of analysts to uphold the inner world of unconscious fantasy, rooted in infantile object relations, as the central subject of psychoanalytic interest, even when this leads to psychic truths that are repugnant.
Fifty years later, fourteen prominent psychoanalysts continue Klein's pioneering inquiry in Envy and Gratitude Revisited, a book in such high demand that it sold out within weeks and is now in its second printing. These analysts, like Klein before them, demonstrate how understanding the vicissitudes of envy and gratitude takes us from the periphery to the center of the human psyche, greatly expanding our clinical reach.
In this collection of essays, Priscilla Roth and Alessandra Lemma have assembled an impressive group of analysts working at the forefront of current controversies about the nature of therapeutic action, the relative contributions of innate and environmental factors in psychic life, and theoretical and clinical approaches to the treatment of seriously disturbed patients. The British neo-Kleinian analysts represented here have made important advances in the understanding and treatment of difficult patients, and their work has inspired an emergence of interest in Klein in the United States.
While analysts in other parts of the psychoanalytic world found Klein's ideas valuable, for decades most North American analysts wanted nothing to do with them. There was a general attitude that serious analysts need not inquire into this “wild analytic” approach. Klein's work was dismissed w