Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963
The paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions in Klein's own late formulation.
Envy is the angry feeling that another person possesses and enjoys something desirable, the envious impulse being to take it away or to spoil it.
This volume collects Melanie Klein's late papers, written between 1946 and 1963 and first gathered in 1975. It sets out the theoretical apparatus that her clinical successors still work from. 'Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms' names the paranoid-schizoid position and describes projective identification: the phantasy of splitting off parts of the self and lodging them in another, which Klein reads as both defence and communication. The title essay argues that envy is a primary force, present from the start, that attacks the good object precisely because it is good, and it separates envy from greed and jealousy. 'On the Sense of Loneliness' traces an inner isolation that persists after integration, rooted in longing for an unattainable understanding. For the clinician, the papers supply a vocabulary for the most destructive movements in the consulting room, and a way of hearing spoiling and withdrawal as meaning rather than mere resistance.
About the author
Melanie Klein
Melanie Klein (1882 to 1960) was an Austrian-British psychoanalyst and a pioneer of child analysis, which she conducted through the play technique she developed. Her work argues that the infant psyche moves between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, organised around internal objects and unconscious phantasy. She introduced projective identification as a mode of communication and defence. She stands at the centre of British object relations and of the Kleinian tradition that carries her name.
Details
- 1957
- English
- Vintage Classics
- Vintage Classics, 1957
- 384
- 9780099752011