Book
The Kleinian Development
Lectures given at the Institute of Psychoanalysis and the Tavistock Clinic between 1965 and 1978, published in three parts and later collected in one volume. Meltzer traces one line of development and presents its three stages as those of a single developing method and theory. The first part follows Freud's clinical development; its publisher stresses the tension it finds between Freud's truthful clinical observations and a theory not always able to take them in. The second reads Klein's Narrative of a Child Analysis, the case of Richard, week by week; the publisher calls it probably his most personal and passionate book, a tribute to his own analyst. The third sets out the clinical significance of Bion's theory of thinking. Meltzer described the lectures both as a search for integration into a combined internal psychoanalytic object and as a handbook for students.
Main ideas
- Freud, Klein and Bion mark the stages of a single developing psychoanalytic method and theory.
- Freud's truthful clinical observations ran ahead of a theory not always able to take them in.
- A week-by-week reading of Klein's Narrative of a Child Analysis shows her method at work in the case of Richard.
- Bion's theory of thinking has direct clinical significance for analytic work.
- Learning psychoanalysis means integrating its tradition into a combined internal psychoanalytic object.
What it shows
Melanie Klein influenced Donald Meltzer
Meltzer built on Klein's clinical method and theory of positions. In The Kleinian Development he reads her Narrative of a Child Analysis week by week as the turning point of her thought.
Wilfred Bion influenced Donald Meltzer
Meltzer's friendship with Bion shaped his later thinking. The third part of The Kleinian Development is a close reading of Bion, whose theory of thinking Meltzer takes as the next step after Freud and Klein.