Reading Klein

Reading Klein is the latest publication from the New Library of Psychoanalysis Teaching Series (series editor Alessandra Lemma). Written by Margaret and Michael Rustin, it adds Melanie Klein to the other figures and groups in the series: Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, Donald Winnicott, Hanna Segal, French Psychoanalysis, Italian Psychoanalysis together with volumes on technique and observation.

The aim of the series is to offer an overview of key subjects and theorists for those either studying or just interested in psychoanalysis. My first encounter with the series was in 2006 when I was at The Anna Freud Centre/UCL studying for the Psychoanalytic Developmental Psychology MSc. Reading Freud, written by Jean Michel Quinodoz (2005), provided me with a reassuring sense of authority – here was a ‘textbook’ that would provide some of the elusive answers that seemed so slippery and provoked such a range of opinions and responses among those of us encountering Freud for almost the first time. I returned to this ‘textbook’ when teaching seminars about Freud on the IPCAPA child psychotherapy doctoral training, perhaps seeking a form of validation when coming back to my training home as a now qualified graduate of the programme. On re-reading I was a bit surprised; the authority I had placed in the wished for ‘textbook’ had shifted and I found myself having alternative opinions and ideas about some of the concepts and the implications of these. It seems that in the nine years between readings, I had shifted enough to allow there to be multiple axes of authority and (hopefully) some increased flexibility of thought.

My hope for Reading Klein was to gain a better understanding of the development of Klein’s thought over time. I was mindful of Kleinian concepts, but knew little about Klein’s personal history or how, when and where her contributions to psychoanalysis emerged. The volume opens with the writers stating their aim: to present Klein’s ideas through her major writings, an