Tribute to Melanie Klein

Abstract

The Western Historical Manuscript Collection, at the University of
Missouri-Columbia, houses the Stephenson Collection-over 70 document
cartons the size of standard file-drawers. Among this material is
Tribute to Melanie Klein which, from evidence in the text, appears to
have been drafted for The Journal of the Melanie Klein Society in about
1988. While it is evidently not a finished piece, I have elected to
leave the manuscript essentially intact. It provides strong indication
that, near the end of his life, Stephenson was actively revisiting his
unpublished books, Intimations of Self and Psychoanalysis and
Q-methodology. In a 1985 note accompanying a gift of 10 unpublished book
manuscripts to the Journalism School library at Columbia, Stephenson
indicated that these two were not yet ready for readers. Stephenson
envisaged that Tribute to Melanie Klein would include 10 "segments,"
five of which are reproduced here: Segments I-IV for the first time, and
Segment X, 'Intentionality: or how to buy a loaf of bread', which is
reprinted from Operant Subjectivity, 16(3/4), pp. 69-90.