ABSTRACT
In the last several decades, on both sides of the Atlantic, there has been a shift in the analyst's attention towards the moment-by-moment movement of the clinical session, especially within the transference. In some sense Envy and Gratitude straddles both the older and the newer ways in its rhetorical focus. One of the great contributions of Melanie Klein's work is the detail in which she spells out what she calls the "vicious circles" that unfold both in development and in the clinical session as a result of envy. At the end of Envy and Gratitude, Klein writes movingly, "when love can be sufficiently brought together with the split-off rage and envy, these emotions become bearable and diminish, because they are mitigated by love". In Klein's concession that guilt will enter even "the most genuine feelings of gratitude", her use of the word genuine, yet another expression of an ideal or pure state.
