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In a General Introduction, Joan Riviere describes this book as 'a survey of the developments in psycho-analytical knowledge made by the work of Melanie Klein'. Both this Introduction and the sympathetic Preface by Ernest Jones stress the continuity between the work of Freud and that of Melanie Klein, pointing out, with justice, that in many instances she has devoted herself to working out the fuller implication of ideas emanating from Freud, Abraham and other earlier workers. Thus it is her acceptance of the Death Instinct which has led her to her present views on the emotional development of infants, although these include the recognition of the 'fear of death' which Freud thought could not exist as such. Her elaboration of the world of internal object-relationships also stems from Freud's observations on melancholia and Abraham's on manic-depression. This genealogy is indisputable; critics can only take exception to the nature or scope of inferences drawn from ideas not in themselves 'revolutionary'.
It is further emphasized that Melanie Klein has worked out a consistent theory and presented, though in outline and subject to modification, a 'coherent picture' of early infantile life. This claim is also justified but it may increase, rather than allay, the misgivings of some critics, since it lends colour to the feeling that, in the opinion of its proponents, all that remains to be done is to fill in gaps and modify details in what is otherwise a self-sufficient theory. The Introduction deals adequately with the charge that Melanie Klein's work is an 'alternative' to psycho-analysis, but it will not do away with any pre-existing impression that her closest adherents think that what might be called her revised version of psycho-analysis could render all other approaches superfluous. Naturally, no such claim is made, but a passage like the following is far from reassuring: 'She has in fact produced something new in psycho-analysis: namely, an integrated theor