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I have read with interest Douglas Kirsner's Politics Masquerading as Science: Ralph Greenson, Anna Freud and the Klein Wars in the December 2005 issue of The Psychoanalytic Review (Vol. 92, No. 6, pp. 907-927).
I write to correct a factual error. The article states (p. 909) that Melanie Klein's theoretical ideas were first discussed before an American psychoanalytic society in Los Angeles in 1959. In fact, Klein's theoretical ideas were discussed at the New York Psychoanalytic Society in February 1955 when, at the invitation of Edith Jacobson, President of the New York Psychoanalytic Society, Dr. Elizabeth Zetzel presented a paper, “An Approach to the Relation between Concept and Content in Psychoanalytic Theory (with special reference to the work of Melanie Klein and her followers).” The paper was discussed by Heinz Hartmann, Rudolph Lowenstein, Bertram Lewin, Phyllis Greenacre and Margaret Mahler, and was subsequently published in Psychoanal. St. Child (, 11:99-121). It is also noteworthy that in 1951 Zetzel had presented a paper to the American Psychoanalytic Association, “The Depressive Position,” in which she urged her colleagues to recognize the value of Klein's clinical findings. Zetzel's early role in advocating a serious consideration of Klein's theoretical and clinical work is documented in my paper, “American Women Psychoanalysts, 1911-1941,” Annu. Psychoanal., , 29:161-177.
Sincerely,
Nellie L. Thompson, PhD