III

Reading George Klein's 1971 contribution (not published until 1976) in 1979 provides an unusual and enlightening perspective on the development of psychoanalytic thinking during the same period. Klein took as his starting point the extant ego psychology that had been built upon Freud's structural model, and the subsequent contributions of the Hartmann school. What emerges is a superbly thought-through critical assessment of ego and drive psychology, as well as a harbinger of a new phase in psychoanalytic clinical theorizing: the psychoanalytic psychology of the self. Departing from drive theory, Klein's psychology rests on an understanding of fundamental motives for action and thought different from that provided by Freud's classical metapsychology. Perhaps the best introduction to Klein's work would characterize it as an intermediate step, critical to the intellectual continuity of psychoanalytic history, between ego psychology and a more fully developed psychology of the self. Towards such an end, Klein elaborates a number of “core principles” which he feels underly all psychological functioning. Psychopathology and therapeutic approaches are not the focus of this work.

Psychoanalytic Theory is divided into two sections: Part I is an introduction to the basic principles of drive theory and ego psychology, discussed according to the two levels Klein identifies within psychoanalytic theory: the clinical and the metapsychological. One value of this distinction is reflected in Klein's persistent and unwavering view that clinical psychoanalysis must rest on the meaning of experience to the patient, and not upon models derived from other kinds of data, such as neurophysiology, communications, or information theory. This includes, of course, Freud's own nineteenth century neurophysiology as developed in “Project for a Scientific Psychology .” The argument that Freud's usage was metaphorical does not