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Margaret Rustin and Michael Rustin have written a gem of a book. Reading Klein is an erudite and lucid guide through the collected works of one of the great original minds in psychoanalysis. Through the use of extended quotations, much of the text is in Melanie Klein’s own words. Rustin and Rustin accompany these carefully chosen quotations with interpretive commentary that orients us to each exerpt’s place in Klein’s overall body of work; elaborates her extension of, and at times departure from, Freud; elucidates the cultural and historical context in which she developed her ideas; and indicates how and by whom her concepts have been developed over time. All in fewer than 200 pages. Anyone interested in an in-depth reading of the body of Klein’s work from her first published paper to her last need look no further. Reading Klein is a work of serious scholarship that offers immense clinical utility, and is a pleasure to read.
While interest in Kleinian theory and clinical technique has burgeoned in many parts of the world in recent years, I suspect that most analysts interested in a Kleinian approach have educated themselves primarily through the works of her successors—the first generation of Bion, Winnicott, Rosenfeld, Segal, Joseph, and Meltzer, or contemporary Kleinians such as O'Shaughnessy, Britton, Steiner, and Feldman, to name only a few. Not many will have spent much time with Klein’s actual writings, beyond a handful of her better-known papers. And fewer still will have taken the trouble to read all four volumes of her collected works. Reading Rustin and Rustin’s book will convince you—whether you are coming to Klein for the first time or are steeped in her work—that reading Klein is worth the trouble, and reading her with their lively and scholarly accompaniment is even better.
Some analysts may have been dissuaded from reading Klein because she has a reputation as a dry, dense writer. But Rustin and Rustin have done a masterful job of choosing selections fr