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This is a book written for people interested in 'getting help with ordinary daily problems' through the acquisition of a 'Kleinian' approach to self understanding which the author herself found useful. It deals with some of Melanie Klein's theories and describes her approach to 'psychoanalytic insight', human behaviour, phantasy life and mental conflict. This does not seem to be a book of interest to psychoanalysts or clinicians as it does not deal with analytic problems.
The introduction to the book is mainly used to defend this dynamic approach from the critics of psychoanalysis as if this might help the reader to give up his resistances to read, understand and learn from the text. This text does to a great extent de-mystify many psychoanalytic concepts but does it with a zeal that conveys the attempt to tame the disbeliever and convert the sceptic. This is done in a fashion that is somewhat misleading: it being easy to read as it is written in a colloquial style, with very clear descriptions of illustrative vignettes and ingenious interpretations making it appealing to the reader wanting to take a short cut to self improvement. It seems to me that it is not possible to simplify something which is by definition extremely complex. And things here are made to look simple by leaving