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This book attempts a ‘fresh approach’ to Melanie Klein's work, ‘offering an exploration of the themes that gradually gain momentum in her early papers and placing these in the broader context of professional debates which spurred her thinking’ (p. 5). This is an important aim, and the book is a serious contribution to Klein studies. After Klein's death there was a concerted attempt by her followers to make her work accessible through didactic books and articles (e.g. Segal, 1964, 1979). However latterly, in the last ten years or more, there has been an attempt at a more reflective approach to her ideas and practice (Petot, 1990; Spillius, 1988; Hinshelwood, 1989) with works that do not demand allegiance, and avoid prejudicial dismissal - pitfalls which many secondary sources tend to fall into. Likierman's book falls into this category of reflective study of Klein, and it is an important evaluation of Klein's work and historical position. It is not intended as a didactic text informing students of Melanie Klein's thinking although much can be gained from reading it as an educational text. In fact it is more of a work of history, a conceptual history of one strand of psychoanalytic thinking from around 1926 to 1960.
It is not a clinical work nor does it make reference to later Kleinian thinking. It is in fact a close reading of Klein's own papers. Approximately half the book concerns the context for Klein's early work and papers, prior to the depressive position in 1935. Likierman's ‘fresh approach’ to this oeuvre is certainly written with a freshness of style. It covers the significant conceptual contributions which Klein introduced into British psychoanalysis excellently. The first half of the book largely deals with context and the formative influences on her, especially that of Ferenczi. The second half the well-known theoretical developments of the depressive position, paranoid-schizoid position and primary envy; and with equal excellence it points up and debates