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This volume contains most of the excellent life work of the late George Klein, his major and representative papers spanning more than two decades of experimentation and conceptualization in the realm of cognition, especially perception. Recognizing the contribution psychoanalysis had made and could make to his field—a contribution at once inspirational, methodological, theoretical, and empirical—Klein strove to achieve a scholarly and clinical mastery of psychoanalysis. He studied with David Rapaport, whose seminal influence is richly represented in these papers, then completed his training at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and delved deeply into Heinz Hartmann's contributions. In time he became a much appreciated speaker before psychoanalytic groups. With Robert Holt he created a psychoanalytic research center at New York University.
Klein attempted to integrate experimental cognitive psychology and psychoanalytic ego psychology. His scholarship was extensive, his range of comprehension and appreciation enviable. In his own 'cognitive style' (which, along with 'control', is one of his main organizing concepts), he met the ideal of the ego psychologist indicated by Hartmann. From experimental and theoretical psychology he drew on the work of such masters as Gibson, Hebb, Ames, and Wallach; from psychoanalysis he drew heavily on Freud, Hartmann, and Rapaport. His pioneering work on subliminal perception overlaps that of Charles Fisher.
Klein steadily concerned himself with adaptational processes. He focused on the problem of maintaining veridicality of perception