Melanie Klein: Her World and Her Work

Grosskurth is to be commended on her ability to present a complex view of a woman whose work she clearly idealizes. Melanie Klein emerges as a woman as difficult to grasp as her ideas: At once both a bullish narcissist who required complete fidelity by her students and analysands, and a remarkable pioneer who overcame gender obstacles, anti-semitism, and lay status to become one of the century's most influential psychoanalytic visionaries. This is a must-read account of the life of a woman who was/is personally and professionally both reviled and cultified, and whose insights into the mental life of infants and children remain profoundly controversial. I walked away from my encounter with this book deeply intrigued about the person, the cult, and the ideas of Melanie Klein. My clinical work, I suspect, will be creatively enriched as I further delve into the contents of her vision. As setting a biographical context that goes beyond the linear narration of a life, I recommend this book as a launching point for anyone undertaking the teaching or learning of Kleinian psychoanalysis, or psychoanalytic theory of any persuasion. My only gripe about the book is Grosskurth's seeming need to defend Klein against her critics, rather than trusting the reader to simply appreciate the complexity of this strange, narcissistically fragile, brilliant, and flawed woman.