IV

The Psychoanalytic Review has chosen wisely in selecting G. S. Klein's Psychoanalytic Theory as an important book in psychoanalysis. One of the book's striking features is the number of areas in which it anticipated the current debate and ferment in psychoanalysis. Indeed, Klein's work constitutes an important formative influence in creating this ferment. Klein contributed to the full articulation of the clinical theory-metapsychology distinction. He also shows in this book that he anticipated the current importance given to the concept of self. Along with others, such as Holt19, 21 and Schafer36, 37 he pointed forcefully to the inadequacies of the Freudian drive-discharge model. Although Klein isn't always right, the qualities that are always apparent in the book—as they were always present in Klein as a person—are the excitement with ideas, the ability to generate interest in others' ideas, and as the editors point out in their preface, an independence and integrity of mind that led to a dissatisfaction with dogma and an insistance on following observations and ideas to wherever they might lead. I shall first summarize some of Klein's ideas and then subject a few of them to some brief critical remarks.

Klein's main contributions in this book center around a number of interrelated ideas which, taken together, constitute a radical revision of traditional psychoanalytic theory. Klein holds to a sharp distinction between the clinical theory and the metapsychology of psychoanalysis. He rejects the latter and insists that the former is the heart of psychoanalysis. He then characterizes the clinical theory (which, in Klein's view, is now tantamount to characterizing what is significant about psychoanalytic theory) as an approach that tries to specify the