Knowledge and Its Pretenders

A perspective on Klein
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-041-35248-8
Verlag: Taylor & Francis

Buch, Englisch, 338 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: The New Library of Psychoanalysis

In this book, David Bell examines Melanie Klein's central contributions and their later evolution, contextualising them within a broader cultural and intellectual framework.

Klein, building on the foundations provided by Freud, provided a hugely influential reshaping of psychoanalytic theory and practice. Covering such key concepts as projective identification, unconscious phantasy, the nature of loss, and the death drive, Bell examines how Klein's contributions radically reshaped our understanding of the nature of the unconscious mental life both at the level of theory and of clinical practice.

This deep understanding of Freud and Klein's work and its place in contemporary psychoanalytic and intellectual culture, provides a key reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, historians of idea and anyone wishing to better understand the continued importance of the work of Freud and Klein.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Professional Practice & Development

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bell, David

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Unconscious phantasy: Some historical and conceptual dimensions 2. On projective identification 3. Commentary on Laplanche’s Klein 4. “One is always nearer by not keeping still”: Reflections on psychic change 5. Bion: The phenomenologist of loss 6. Some observations on the relation to reality and the function of belief in schizophrenia The Wish to Destroy 7. I am the spirit that negates all: Reflections on Freud’s death drive 8. “Civilization and Its Discontents” 9. Psychoanalytic reflections on the conditions of possibility of human destructiveness 10. The death drive: Phenomenological perspectives in contemporary Kleinian theory Concluding Chapter 11. Knowledge and its pretenders

Über Autor(innen)

David Bell, is a training analyst and former president of the British Psychoanalytic Society. He spent twenty-five years as a consultant psychiatrist at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust where he founded and led a new service for patients with long standing serious psychological disorder.