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Foreword. This chapter is, on the whole, more of a panoramic perspective than a complete review.1 My feeling is that in order to arrive at this latter one would have to comb carefully all Klein's writings, a task which I have not attempted and which would take a long time; I have only drawn from my own reservoir of the knowledge I have acquired and from the impression gathered throughout the long decades of acquaintance with her writings.
I am aware that the way I deal, in this chapter, with Melanie Klein's contribution may at first sight appear as not having anything to do with her discoveries as explicitly formulated by her. Yet, as in the case of my reformulation of Freud's unconscious, what I am doing is making explicit some concepts which are implicit in her writings, even though at first sight she would most probably have been surprised at what I am affirming of her research. I fancy, as I also do in the case of Freud, that on second thoughts she would have come to see that the assertions just made are true. So far as I am concerned—again, as in the case of my study of Freud—it is in the fact of living in the atmosphere created by him, on the one hand, and by her, on the other, that I arrived at my present formulation, through the interaction of their ideas with my interest in other, different subjects.
My hope is that what I am putting forward here is one way of continuing along the path which Klein had the courage to discover and pursue, so as to venture further into it and explore the views it discloses.
I see this chapter as a coherent as well as a serene homage to Melanie Klein.