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Not many years ago, a teacher of psychoanalytic theory would have been hard pressed to recommend a textbook that would cover in sufficient detail all the important schools of psychoanalytic thinking. This gap was redressed in 1983, when Greenberg and Mitchell published their now classic Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory.
In Object Relations and Psychopathology, Frank Summers has created a work in which clinical and theoretical issues are well interwoven, where the reader gets a good sense of how a particular theorist would work with patients suffering from pathology, enunciated in clinical theory by the writers themselves. Summers is less concerned with the tracing of theoretical origins as are Greenberg and Mitchell. In his first chapter, he deals with Freud and the ego psychologists (e.g., Jacobson, Mahler) from the vantage point of their being adherents of the drive theory. He then goes on to describe in subsequent chapters those writers whom he considers to be true object relations theorists. This list includes Fairbairn, Guntrip, Winnicott, Klein, Kernberg, and Kohut. To his credit, he adds a chapter on the adherents of interpersonal psychoanalysis, some of whom were followers of Harry Stack Sullivan, but have gone on to form their own views of intrapsychic motivation. The inclusion of such writers as Levinson, Greenberg, Mitchell, and Gill serves to acquaint readers with the work of contemporary analysts who are very active in current psychoanalytic debates around the causes of intrapsychic change.
The major authors under consideration are examined from the vantage point of their theories of development, theories of psychopathology, and treatment techniques All major clinical concepts of an author are examined in detail and discussed in the light of subsequent theorizing. For example, Summers elucidates the concept of projective identification as it was introduced by Melanie Klein. He then goes on to describe the work of Bion, and finally Thomas Ogden's