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By reviewing a book made up of a series of papers, each of which deserves a separate review and already discussed over the years, it is possible both to give an overview of the content and to examine the meaning and place such a book occupies in the context of contemporary Kleinian thought. Melanie Klein Today is a book published in two volumes (the first one now available), edited by Elizabeth Bott Spillius, a senior Kleinian psychoanalyst who has undertaken the unenviable (but also gratifying) job of selecting papers by Kleinian authors representative of currents of thought within the Kleinian school of psychoanalysis over the last thirty years. It is an unenviable task because it demands making decisions about what to choose and therefore what to exclude from a reader of Kleinian psychoanalysis. The richness of the material produced over the last forty years necessarily implies leaving out the bulk of Kleinian works, and it is hoped that these volumes will spur the reader into pursuing the development of the individual authors presented here, some of whom have indeed created their own itinerary within the Kleinian development - strictly within the legacy inherited from Melanie Klein.
The excellent choice of papers in this first volume invites two important considerations. Firstly, that it is possible to group a series of papers such as those chosen by the editor, with clear introductions, linking commentaries and summaries so as to give the individual papers coherence and to make the reading of the book as a whole a real pleasure, both in its presentation and its contents. Secondly, that what emerges, as far as Kleinian development is concerned, is that the developmental history of Kleinian theory and practice is in effect the history of the individual development of the Kleinian psychoanalysts who have contributed to the body of knowledge, so that it is not possible to give an accurate sense of direction within this movement without a study in depth of the indivi