Clinical Lectures on Klein and Bion

The original and controversial concepts of Melanie Klein and Wilfred Bion have had a profound and continuing effect on the practice of psychoanalysis. Clinical Lectures on Klein and Bion outlines some of the basic ideas in their thinking and shows in detailed clinical presentation how these ideas can be used to tackle clinical problems. The contributors correct some common misconceptions about Kleinian analysis, while demonstrating the continuity of their everyday work with the seminal ideas of Klein and Bion. 

Originally given as lectures in a series intended to acquaint the general public with recent developments in psychoanalytic thinking and practice, the chapters in this book cover many of the fundamental ideas put forward by Klein and Bion: child analysis, Klein’s use of the concept of unconscious phantasy, projective identification, the paranoid-schizoid and depressivepositions, Bion’s study of psychotic thinking, his ideas of the relation between container and contained, and the usefulness of the idea of reversible perspective in understanding ‘as if’ personalities.

These chapters can be seen as a sequel to Melanie Klein Today (Nos 7 and 8 in The New Library of Psychoanalysis) in that they show further development of the work based on Melanie Klein’s thought and ‘bear witness to the continued vitality and growth of her ideas’ (Hanna Segal). They also provide an eminently readable and authoritative introduction to some of the most original and controversial concepts put forward in psychoanalysis.