Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein

Segal wrote this short volume as a working exposition of Melanie Klein's thought, following the order in which Klein built it. She takes the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions first, treating them as configurations of anxiety and object relation rather than fixed stages, then reads projective identification, envy, and symbol formation as consequences that follow. Each chapter pairs a concept with the clinical material that generated it, keeping the theory anchored to what Klein observed. For a practising clinician, the book supplies a vocabulary that holds under pressure: it shows how a patient's movement between positions organises defence, phantasy, and the capacity to symbolise. Segal sets out each move so it can be followed and put to work, without smoothing away what is hard in it. First published in 1964 and later enlarged with chapters on Klein's early work and on technique, it remains the text clinicians reach for when they need Klein set out whole.