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I was pleased, intrigued, and excited when I received Object Relations, Work and the Self for review. This topic is right up my alley as a “psychoanalytic” organizational consultant, so this was a way to assure that I'd actually read what appeared to be an important book. I hoped that the experience would cement my understanding of object relations theory generally, and allow extending organizational theory in the direction of using more of the self in practice. I also imagined it might fulfill a long-time wish for a text catering to beginning practitioners, some of whom might not be well versed in object relations theory.
David Levine is well qualified to write this book. He is a member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and has published a number of related books and numerous articles in the field. He is a prominent teacher in a well-respected graduate program in International Studies at the University of Denver. Levine has an encyclopedic knowledge of psychoanalytic theory, including Freud, classical and modern Kleinian theory, Bion, Fairbairn, and Winnicott, as well as self-psychology including Kohut, Kernberg, Meissner, and many others.
In the introduction and early chapters of Object Relations, Work and the Self, it seems that Levine intended to move classical Kleinian theory—the historical bedrock of psychoanalytic organizational understanding pioneered by Bion, Menzies, Jacques, and others—in a more contemporary direction. I was taken with how Levine echoes Hirschhorn's (in press) concept of the imagination requiring constraint in order for fantasy to progress towards creativity. Levine focuses on the evolution of play into work via the self's developing awareness of the limits of imagination and fantasy. I like his integration of Winnicott's “transitional space”—the locus where play leads to creative work and potential ideas. Levine, like Czander (2008), provides conceptual leads to appreciating how power-hungry CEOS ju