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There is at present a renewed and widespread interest in the relationship between the founding ideas of Sigmund Freud and those which were developed from them by Melanie Klein. The publication, therefore, of the collected writings, together with a biographical essay, of someone uniquely but separately important to both of them seems particularly timely.
Joan Riviere (her name was anglicized to rhyme with ear as befitted her pronounced English qualities) was born in 1883, a year later than her illustrious colleague Melanie Klein and died two years after her in 1962. She was a founder member of the British Psycho-Analytical Society. Ernest Jones wrote of her in a letter to Freud (21 January 1921): 'I think she understands psycho-analysis better than any other member …' Freud himself invited her to have analysis with him in a forthright way: 'It goes without saying that if you want to enter analysis, you will take precedence over everyone else, as my translator and as an outstanding member of the London Group'.
As Athol Hughes points out in her biographical essay, Riviere was generally regarded as the most creative translator of Freud, just as she became Klein's greatest exponent. In Hanna Segal's words, 'She could put across some of Mrs Klein's ideas with a vividness that I think neither Mrs Klein nor any of her other collaborators achieved'. I think it is probably the case that she was second only to Freud as a writer of genuine quality amongst analysts.
As translator, expositor, analyst and supervisor, Riviere is acknowledged in this book as outstanding. Hughes marshals comments in her essay testifying to this and one of Riviere's eminent former pupils, Hanna Segal, takes pleasure in amplifying this in her foreword. Hanna Segal told me personally how much my generation in the British Society owe unknowingly to the clinical understandings which were communicated to supervisees such as herself, Herbert Rosenfeld, and Henri Rey. We have also seen the impact of