Until recently underestimated in America, Melanie Klein was a leading figure in psychoanalytic circles from the 1920s until her death in 1960. Parent of object-relations theory, she saw the development of children, and of the female in particular, in a way that was both an extension of and a challenge to orthodox Freudian thinking. Now, drawing on a wealth of hitherto unexplored documents as well as extensive interviews with people who knew and worked with Klein, Phyllis Grosskurth has written a superb account of this important, complicated woman and her theories—theories that are still growing in influence both here and abroad. Melanie Klein was not only a highly original theorist and effective practitioner, but a thoroughly fascinating woman. This brilliant, definitive book on her life is a major contribution to psychoanalytic history.

Reading Melanie Klein brings together the most innovative and challenging essays on Kleinian thought from the last two decades. The book features material which appears in English for the first time.

This volume introduces the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein to the general field of education and traces her theories of mental life as an emotional situation, through to problems of self/other relations in our own time. The case is made for Klein’s relevance and the difficulties her theories pose to the activities of learning and pedagogical relation. Klein’s vocabulary—the paranoid/schizoid and depressive positions, phantasy, object relations, projective identification, anxiety, envy, and the urge for reparation and gratitude— are discussed in terms of their evolution and the designs of her main questions, all stemming from the problem of inhibition. Her contribution to an understanding of symbolization and the shift from concrete thinking to greater freedom of mind is analyzed. The essay develops the following questions: why is learning an emotional situation? How did Klein’s life and larger history influence her views? What are her central theories of mental life? Why did Klein focus on anxiety and phantasies as making up the life of the mind? What is object relations theory? And, what does Klein’s model of the self proffer to contemporary education in schools and in universities?

Gathers writings by the Viennese psychoanalyst concerning infant analysis, Oedipal conflicts, anxiety situations, symbol formation, and envy.

Following Freud's death in 1939, the radical theories of Melanie Klein were the subject of prolonged controversy and fierce debate within the British Psychoanalytical Society. At the time, individuals fought passionately in support of their positions. In the midst of, or as a result of, the personal animosities and political manoeuvrings, important intellectual contributions were made, and practical decisions taken, which were to affect the development of psychoanalysis down to the present day. The Freud-Klein Controversies 1941-45 offers the first complete record of the debate, including all relevant papers and correspondence, based on previously closed archive material which is presented without censorship.

In the late twelfth century, Japanese people called the transitional period in which they were living the "age of warriors." Feudal clans fought civil wars, and warriors from the Kanto Plain rose up to restore the military regime of their shogun, Yoritomo. The whole of this intermediary period came to represent a gap between two stable societies: the ancient period, dominated by the imperial court in Heian (today's Kyoto), and the modern period, dominated by the Tokugawa bakufu based in Edo (today's Tokyo). In this remarkable portrait of a complex period in the evolution of Japan, Pierre F. Souyri uses a wide variety of sources -- ranging from legal and historical texts to artistic and literary examples -- to form a magisterial overview of medieval Japanese society. As much at home discussing the implications of the morality and mentality of The Tale of the Heike as he is describing local disputes among minor vassals or the economic implications of the pirate trade, Souyri brilliantly illustrates the interconnected nature of medieval Japanese culture. The Middle Ages was a decisive time in Japan's history because it confirmed the country's national identity. New forms of cultural expression, such as poetry, theater, garden design, the tea ceremony, flower arranging, and illustrated scrolls, conveyed a unique sensibility -- sometimes in opposition to the earlier Chinese models followed by the old nobility. The World Turned Upside Down provides an animated account of the religious, intellectual, and literary practices of medieval Japan in order to reveal the era's own notable cultural creativity and enormous economic potential.