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American psychoanalysis has become more familiar with object relations theory and the Kleinian perspective in the last two decades; nevertheless, many American psychoanalysts have not yet incorporated this theory into their everyday work of thinking about patients. Therefore, it is not surprising that most American psychoanalysts have not stayed informed with the most recent Kleinian literature. Envy and Gratitude Revisited is a collection of fourteen new papers by prominent authors, most of them Kleinian and British. They remind us that the original 100-page book, Envy and Gratitude: A Study of Unconscious Sources, by Melanie Klein was first published in 1957 (much later than many realize), and that it influenced world psychoanalysis in a way only comparable to the writings of Sigmund Freud.
Most American psychoanalysts date the introduction of Kleinian concepts into American psychoanalysis to 1967, when Otto Kernberg—in the Menninger tradition of integrating psychoanalysis with psychiatry—used his Kleinian background to understand and treat borderline conditions, or severe personality disorders. This kept the Kleinian approach circumscribed to this very specific group of patients, until further communication with British colleagues occurred during the 1990s. Many were taken by surprise when Roy Schafer declared himself a Kleinian in his 1997 book The Contemporary Kleinians of London. In addition, Glen Gabbard, also a follower of the same Menninger tradition as Kernberg, published in 1999 his book Countertransference Issues in Psychiatric Treatment. What he presented was met with intellectual interest, but these Kleinian ideas did not make it to mainstream psychiatry. In this new book, one is reminded of the richness of thought that Melanie Klein's writings trigger, with language that is very clear and close to clinical experience.
Even though all the papers in Envy and Gratitude Revisited have original vantage points organized around Klein's ideas, several topics re