Transference: Freud or Klein

As far as I know most psychoanalysts in the United States have had only a slight exposure to Kleinian psychoanalysis. For the most part the curricula of training institutes include the works of Klein and her followers under deviant schools of psychoanalysis, akin to Horney and Alexander, and are given little time. At international meetings one does hear papers by Kleinian analysts but unless one is acquainted with their special mode of thinking and terminology, their presentations are difficult to understand. I believe this is due not only to the Freudian analyst's lack of familiarity with Kleinian ideas but also to his awareness that they are considered heretical, a point of view expressed in the criticisms of the Kleinian school by such eminent psychoanalysts as Waelder (1937), Glover (1945) and E. Bibring (1947). Even Fenichel's encyclopaedic textbook (1945) contains only a few minor references to the work of Melanie Klein and they are all negative. The Kleinian psychoanalysts reciprocate this closed door policy by largely neglecting the writings of Freudian authors. Discussions between Kleinians and Freudians at international meetings give one the impression of people speaking two different languages at each other, with one ignorant of the other and both firmly prejudiced towards each other.

In recent years I have become impressed and puzzled by the growing number of adherents to Kleinian psychoanalysis, particularly in Latin America. I have also noted an increase in the positive references to Kleinian ideas by some Freudian analysts, especially in regard to child, psychotic and borderline patients. There is a surprising note of accord in Kernberg's (1969) survey of some of the writings of Zetzel (1956a), (1956b), Geleerd (1963), Jacobson (1964) and Kernberg (1966), (1967).

It is difficult to evaluate how significant this rapprochement really is. Joffe's (1969) negative evaluation of the Kleinian (1957) concept of envy is a case in point. He completely r