Donald Meltzer

This essential edition brings together a collection of classic papers from key figures in Kleinian and post-Kleinian thought that explore the relationship between psychoanalysis and art.Sandra Gosso begins with a comprehensive and fascinating guide to the history of this relationship which began with Freud and was developed further by Melanie Klein at a time when most analysts were moving away from links with art. Melanie Klein's pivotal paper, "Infantile Anxiety Situations Reflected in a Work of Art and in the Creative Impulse", follows the Introduction. The other papers featured are mainly from British analysts who expanded on Melanie Klein's ideas, inspired by the influence of the creative Bloomsbury and Imago Groups.

The author formulates here the existence of an anxiety apparatus whose functioning is a part of the ego and the personality structure and illustrates how in attacking this apparatus the ego is attacking itself. An example is given of the workings of the death instinct, and a differentiation is made between the ego's defence mechanisms and other pathological character devices.