ABSTRACT
Freud wanted to leave a clear legacy. However, what he left behind was instead a family tree of sorts, with many different followers, who each generated his or her ideas to suit his or her own concerns and predilections. This book discusses three of the British schools that followed in his footsteps: the ego psychologists, headed by his daughter Anna Freud; the Kleinian school of object relations, headed by the powerful, brilliant German Melanie Klein, who had migrated to London long before Freud; and the middle school, which developed between these two women and was more loosely held together by the Englishman D.W. Winnicott
The American branches of psychoanalysis were created in very different ways. Heinz Kohut developed self psychology, which is more concerned with purpose and meaning than the drive and discharge of the Freudian model. Harry Stack “H.S.” Sullivan, key founder of the relational school, focused almost completely on the interpersonal anxiety generated in any context. He was absolutely clear that the doctor did not heal the patient. Rather, the two “operated” on each other—if successful, creating safety and understanding.
John Bowlby was a contemporary of the British schools named above, but his theory of attachment was rejected by psychoanalysis as too biologically based (Fonagy). It was only when that theory was fully embraced in the American traditions that attachment theory become a recognized and powerful school in its own right.
