Introduction:

Rosenfeld in Retrospect
Edited by John Steiner

Introduction
By John Steiner

In April 2000 the Melanie Klein Trust, sponsored a conference on the work of Herbert Rosenfeld and the enthusiasm generated on that day led to the decision to bring out this book. Its aim was to keep alive an interest in his work and to show how it has influenced a contemporary approach. It was clear that such a conference cannot give a comprehensive overview and this has to await a scholarly appraisal of his contribution, but in editing the book I did hope to give a flavour of his achievement and to remind colleagues of his importance, particularly since, at least in my view, he is currently undervalued. Certainly many of his former students and colleagues see him as one of the most influential of those analysts who were students of Melanie Klein and who applied and extended her ideas.

In keeping with the aim of conveying his liveliness and influence I decided to present the papers from the conference with only minor editorial amendments. This is particularly evident in the paper by Riccardo Steiner but is true for the other papers too where the text of the papers and the comments of the discussants seem to me to deepen and enliven the themes just as his own work did.

Section 1. contains the three conference papers by Mrs Edna O’Shaughnessy, Dr Ron Britton and Professor Ricardo Steiner, and the discussions by Dr Michel Feldman and Dr Hanna Segal. Following these I have included a review of Rosenfeld’s work which I wrote after the conference was over. In this account I try to demonstrate the importance of his classic papers and I also attempt a critical survey of some of the more controversial developments in his later work.

Section 2. consists of four papers by Rosenfeld himself, which were chosen after a good deal of discussion with colleagues. We were clearly not able to be comprehensive or balanced and went instead for what we thought were his most significant and original contributions.

All the authors in this book knew Rosenfeld personally and all of them have, in different ways, been influenced by him, so that the book as a whole is an individual rather than academic account of his work. We hope that the reader will be able to use it as an introduction to some of his best work and that he will be stimulated to read further for himself and come to his own appraisal of a major contribution to psychoanalysis.



Copyright © 2006  John Steiner

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