ABSTRACT
Nowadays the Institute's curriculum includes a number of courses on Kleinian thought. A central issue is the way Melanie Klein conceptualizes the relationship between subject and object. Her views contain certain propositions, fundamental to her thought, which are clearly defined, well articulated, and firmly maintained. Klein links together love and gratitude as varieties of positive relatedness to the object. The difficulty with Klein's formulation of gratitude as a variety of love is that it is indeed different from envy. Envy emanates directly from the desire set in motion by the oral- and anal-sadistic drives. Love and gratitude, do not emanate directly from the experience of enjoyment and satisfaction. The experience of Being or unity is sometimes understood in Kleinian thinking in the sense of identification, which is a defence-driven unity set up against losing the object or giving it up.
