New Directions in Psycho-Analysis

Contemporary psycho-analysis owes a very great deal to the ideas formulated by Mrs. Klein. To mark the occasion of her seventieth birthday, the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis published a special edition containing a collection of essays written by her colleagues and pupils and dedicated to her. This collection, published in 1952, revised, augmented by several new essays including two by Mrs. Klein herself and given coherence by unobtrusive editing, constitutes the present volume. The decision to retain the essay form has resulted in the inevitable tendency to repetition and loss of continuity. But the loss in solidity is more than compensated for by the gain in readability. The reader is not condemned to a cover to cover reading marathon : he can safely and comfortably browse amongst the essays, each of which is complete in itself. But perhaps "safely and comfortably browse" is an inappropriate phrase : these essays are little concerned with the orthodox or the familiar. The book records exploration still in progress, not consolidation or exploitation of ground already won. The reader soon senses that the psychoanalyst's "Frontier of outer space" is the one which divides neurosis from psychosis. Essay after essay deals with attempts made to understand the nature of psychotic thought process and of language and thought itself. Thus the contents of many of these essays are too specialised and speculative for the collection as a whole to constitute a textbook in the accepted sense of the term. Nevertheless, the symposium as it stands can be fairly said to represent, as its publishers claim, "A definite statement of . . . the Kleinian position." To those actively engaged in psycho-analytic work this book has already proved itself of value and its future status as a