Kleinian psychoanalysis has recently experienced a renaissance in academic and clinical circles. This text responds to the upsurge of interest in her work by bringing together innovative and challenging essays on Kleinian thought since the the late-1970s. The work recontextualizes Melanie Klein to the more well-known works of Freud and Lacan and disproves the long-held claim that her psychoanalysis is both too normative and too conservative for critical consideration. The essays address Klein's distinctive readings of the unconscious and phantasy, her tenacious commitment to the death drive, her fecund notions of anxiety, projection and projective identification and, most famously, her challenge to Freud's Oedipus complex and theories of sexual difference. The authors demonstrate that not only is it possible to rethink the epistemological basis of Kleinian theory, rendering it as vital as those of Freud and Lacan, but also that her psychoanalysis can engage in dialogue with diverse disciplines such as politics, ethics and literary theory.
This collection should be a valuable addition to the scholarship on Melaine Klein and catalyst for further debate not only within the psychoanalytic community but also across social, critical and cultural studies.