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Dr Weininger has written an interesting book on the application of Kleinian theory. Although entitled Being and not Being, it is the subtitle that conveys the main focus of the book's content, namely the death instinct. He examines the manifestations of the death instinct as he sees them in the clinical situation. The first part of the book examines the author's work mainly with children. The second part makes a powerful plea for society (especially hospitals, clinics, and parents) to come to a better understanding of the impact on children of the experience of death, whether the death affects a parent, sibling, or the child himself. His goal is to find a better way to handle the emotional disturbances stirred up by these tragic situations. Thus one part of the book is clinical and theoretical while the other has a more sociological emphasis.
The more important section to this reviewer is the first, dealing with clinical and theoretical issues. Here it seemed that Weininger wanted to spell out an integrated outline of Kleinian theory concerning projection and introjection mechanisms, good and bad introjects, aggression and the death instinct, and the special Kleinian view of the superego, all illustrated by clinical data. In the end it becomes more of a collection of case vignettes interconnected by a link to the death instinct, and interspersed with scattered explanations of Kleinian theory. In Weininger's description of Kleinian theory, superego punishment can come equally from sources that are internal (superego) or external (objects). Similarly, the punishment can be directed at the ego or at the external world. This is implied, for example, when he speaks of an extreme superego response that makes the baby see the world as dangerous (p. 9).
There are many statements referring to parental anger as an experience of the death instinct, suggesting that its origin lies in the external world. In fact Weininger treats anything related to death as a manifesta