Melanie Kleins writings particularly on infant development & psychosis have been crucial both to theoretical work & to clinical practice. Envy & Gratitude collects her writings from 1946 until her death in 1960 including two papers published posthumously. Kleins major paper Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms introduces the concept of the paranoid-schizoid position in which the infant ego splits projects & introjects its objects
- most particularly the mother
- during the first few months of life. Envy & Gratitude her last major work introduces her theory of primary envy.