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It is a pleasure to be asked to review a book that can be recommended enthusiastically. Although most of the papers in this collection by the American psychoanalyst, Robert Caper, are already available in journal form, the publication of this book is an important event in that the papers together constitute a major contribution to the clarification of contemporary post-Kleinian psychoanalytic theory. Even though one may have read individual chapters in their original journal form, the clarity of Caper's writing makes a cumulative impact read ‘in the round’, so to speak. Six of the chapters were published in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis and one in the Psychoanalytical Quarterly, all between 1994 and 1998. Two chapters were papers given at symposia in Brazil in 1996 and 1997 on the work of Bion. To these Caper has added two new chapters which elaborate ideas already discussed in the other papers, tightening the focus of the book rather than drawing the reader into new areas.
In his introduction, the author says that, originally, he had not intended these papers, consciously anyway, to have a common theme, although in retrospect they all seem to explore aspects of the developmental struggle to distinguish self from object. It is one of the strengths of this book that it is not one of those collections of previously published papers that the author then struggles, often in transparently artificial ways, to link together. It is much more as if Robert Caper had decided to serialize his book, much as nineteenthcentury novelists used to do, allowing the reader to follow its evolution. One result is that there is a tone of confidence in the theoretical coherence of Caper's elaboration of Kleinian ideas. And it is remarkable that there is no hint of the polemics which have characterized discussions of Kleinian theory by previous generations of North American psychoanalysts.
I wonder whether this book can be seen as another marker of the move beyond the querulous