Knowledge and Its Pretenders

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