Joan Riviere – författare

Psychoanalysis is a science evidently fore-ordained to growth and expansion, and among those who have extended the scope of both theory and practice Melanie Klein holds a unique place.This book is a survey of the developments in psychoanalytical knowledge resulting from her work. Her main discoveries relate to the very early phases of mental life. She recognized that the world of unconscious feeling and impulse (which we call 'phantasy') is the effective source of all human actions and reactions, modified though they are when translated into actual external behaviour or conscious thought. Although Freud first enunciated this truth, which originates in his fundamental discovery of the unconscious mind of man, he left many problems still unsolved. These have been brought nearer to a solution through Melanie Klein's consistent awareness of the significance of unconscious phantasy. Not only students of psychoanalysis and workers in related medical fields but also practising child-psychologists and the informed lay public will find this book of absorbing interest.

Although best known as a disseminator of Freudian and Kleinian ideas, the author also contributed important and original material to the body of psychoanalytic literature. This volume presents some of this material and highlights the importance of the author's contribution.

Freud approved the overall editorial plan, specific renderings of key words and phrases, and the addition of valuable notes, from bibliographical and explanatory. Many of the translations were done by Strachey himself; the rest were prepared under his supervision. The result was to place the Standard Edition in a position of unquestioned supremacy over all other existing versions. Newly designed in a uniform format, each new paperback in the Standard Edition opens with a biographical essay on Freud's life and work —along with a note on the individual volume—by Peter Gay, Sterling Professor of History at Yale.

This book is something new in psychoanalytical exposition—both in its subject matter and its form of presentation. It attempts to convey, in everyday language understandable to the layman, some of the unconscious mental processes which underlie the feelings and action of normal, adult men and women.The characteristic feature of human psychology is the intense and continual interplay of the impulses of love on the one hand and hatred and agression on the other. Joan Riviere opens this joint study with an analysis of hate, greed, and aggression, and in the second section Melanie Klein talks about the forces of love, guilt, and reparation. Tracing the impulses in question back to their origins in infancy, the authors point out many features of adult mental life which evidence the persistence of earlier modes of thinking. Then they discuss some of the "infinitely various, subtle and complicated adaptations" by means of which each individual tries, all his life, to keep a balance between the life-brining and the destructive elements of his nature in order to achieve the maximum of security and gratification.

Psychoanalysis is a science evidently fore-ordained to growth and expansion, and among those who have extended the scope of both theory and practice Melanie Klein holds a unique place.This book is a survey of the developments in psychoanalytical knowledge resulting from her work. Her main discoveries relate to the very early phases of mental life. She recognized that the world of unconscious feeling and impulse (which we call 'phantasy') is the effective source of all human actions and reactions, modified though they are when translated into actual external behaviour or conscious thought. Although Freud first enunciated this truth, which originates in his fundamental discovery of the unconscious mind of man, he left many problems still unsolved. These have been brought nearer to a solution through Melanie Klein's consistent awareness of the significance of unconscious phantasy. Not only students of psychoanalysis and workers in related medical fields but also practising child-psychologists and the informed lay public will find this book of absorbing interest.