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As many readers know, the Independent group in psychoanalysis is the designation given in the 1960s to what had formerly been known as the Middle group, so named because its members wished not to align themselves with either of the polarized groups formed by the followers of Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, respectively. Independent Psychoanalysis Today is a compendium of articles by several prominent analysts of the Independent tradition practicing in London today.
As John Keene points out in his very extensive and fascinating introductory essay, “Reflections on the Evolution of Independent Psychoanalytic Thought,” Klein arrived in London in 1926, and her ideas became the subject of debate for some time. Her position in the psychoanalytic community was complicated by the antagonizing presence of her daughter, Melitta Schmideberg, and Schmideberg's analyst, Edward Glover, which fueled a sense of animosity and rancor. When Freud arrived in 1939 with his daughter Anna, a more explicitly polarized set of positions emerged.
Klein's work aroused emotionally heated and contentious reactions that spawned productive but fractious discussions, known as the Controversial Discussions of the 1940s. As Keene describes, the debate was “three-cornered”: it arose out of staunchly pro-Klein and anti-Klein groups, along with a “third non-aligned group who approached Klein's work with a questioning and analytical stance” (p. 5). Keene tells us that Anna Freud and her followers “withdrew to Hampstead” (p. 5), while Glover, disappointed in his wish to be president of the British Psychoanalytical Society, left the Society. Thus, discussion fell to the Kleinians and those who came to be called the Middle group. Sylvia Payne became president of the Society; she initiated an agreement that devised a two-stream structure for psychoanalytic training that kept the British Society in one piece, so to speak.
The first several essays in this book, placed under the rubric of “Orientations,” are lengt