Melanie Klein: The Basics provides an accessible and concise introduction to the life and work of Melanie Klein, whose discoveries advanced those of Freud and other analysts, deepening our insight into the unconscious domain of psychology in human beings. Klein began her work by developing a method of psychoanalysis for children, who suffer from anxiety and other, often unrecognised, conflicts, which enabled understanding of those crucial early steps in the development of human mind and identity. Although she initiated one strand of clinical and theoretical developments, many of her discoveries are well regarded by other schools of psychoanalysis.

R. D. Hinshelwood is a British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who has always had a part-time commitment to the public service (NHS and universities) and to teaching psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. He has written on Kleinian psychoanalysis and on the application of psychoanalysis to social science and political themes. He has taken an interest in and published on the problems of making evidence comparisons between different schools of psychoanalysis.

Tomasz Fortuna trained as a psychoanalyst at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London. He is a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, the Hanna Segal Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies and the scientific committees of both organisations. He has worked as a psychiatrist for the NHS for over 12 years and currently works at the Portman Clinic, Newham Adolescent Mental Health Team, and is in private psychoanalytic practice. His professional interests include the relationship between psychoanalysis and the arts and the understanding of severe emotional disturbance. He is a guest-editor of Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication.

INTRODUCTION

PART 1 - New method, new facts

Chapter 1 - Who was she?

Chapter 2 - Where did she start?

Chapter 3 - Establishing the fundamentals of psychoanalysis

Chapter 4 - What is psychic reality?

Chapter 5 - An insight into children? Chapter 6 - New discoveries, who says?

Conclusions to PART 1

PART 2 - The earliest development - Starting at birth

Chapter 7 - Earlier mechanisms - In and out

Chapter 8 - Experiences and phantasies

Chapter 9 - Who are you? - Ego boundary

Chapter 10 - Depressed?

Chapter 11 - Repairing and caring

Conclusions to PART 2 PART 3 - How crazy can you get?

Chapter 12 -- Splitting of the ego - What destabilises the mind?

Chapter 13 -- Annihilation - who's afraid of going to pieces? Chapter 14 -- Paranoid-schizoid position

Chapter 15 -- Projective identification; he's not all there

Chapter 16 -- The worst of all vices - envy

Chapter 17 -- Psychotic reality?

Conclusion to PART 3

Part 4 - Beyond basics - Truth

Chapter 18 - Pathological organisations - Who's in the Mafia?

Chapter 19 - Containment

Chapter 20 - Thoughts find a thinker

Chapter 21 - How does it all apply?

Conclusion to PART 4

References

GLOSSARY