Introducing Melanie Klein: A Graphic Guide

By R. D. Hinshelwood, Susan Robinson and Oscar Zarate

INTRODUCING guide to the pioneering child psychoanalyst. Born in Vienna in 1882, Melanie Klein became a pioneer in child psychoanalysis and developed several ground-breaking concepts about the nature and crucial importance of the early stages of infantile development. Although she was a devoted Freudian, many of her ideas were seen within the psychoanalytic movement as highly controversial, and this led to heated conflicts, particularly with Freud's daughter, Anna. Introducing Melanie Klein brilliantly explains Klein's ideas, and shows the importance of her startling discoveries which raised such opposition at the time and are only now being recognized for their explanatory power. Her concepts of the depressive position and the paranoid-schizoid position are now in common usage and her work has to be taken seriously by psychoanalysts the world over. She is also now important in many academic fields within the human sciences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Icon Books
• Release date: Jun 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781848317796

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Published by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP

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ISBN: 978-184831-779-6

Text copyright © 1997 Robert Hinshelwood and Susan Robinson

Illustrations copyright © 2013 Icon Books Ltd

The author and artist have asserted their moral rights.

Originating editor: Richard Appignanesi

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introducing Melanie Klein

Melanie’s Childhood

Early Sorrows

Education and Marriage

A Destiny of Travel

Struggles with Libussa

The First World War

Analysis with Ferenczi

First Encounter with Child Analysis

The Little Hans Case

Early Contributions to Child Analysis

The Move to Berlin

The Pioneer, Hermine Hug-Hellmuth

Melanie’s Work Begins

The Case of Ruth

Differences with Freud …

… And Suspicions about Klein

The Bloomsbury Set

Acceptance in Britain

The Climate for Analysis in London

Origin of Klein’s Object-relations

The Case of Peter

Disputes Begin

The Problem of Transference

Totemic Fathers

Refining Freud’s Theories

Tackling Psychotic Disorders: the Case of Dick

An Empty Space

Filling the Space with Symbols

The Case of John

The Depressive Position

Mourning and Melancholia

The Fate of the Lost Object

Loss and Creativity

Klein’s Idea of Position

Understanding the Depressive Position

What Does Klein Mean by Psychotic?

So, What is the Depressive Position?

Taking Inside Oneself: Introjection

Timing the Super-Ego

Working From the Inner State

Internal Objects

A Case Example of Internal Objects

Another Case Example: Unconscious Phantasy

The Combined Parent Figure

Externalizing the Internal

Reparation

The Good Object Inside: Richard’s Response

Coming to Terms with Reality

The Pain of the Depressive Position

Persecutory Guilt

Projection and Introjection

Trouble in the Psycho-Analytical Society

A Three-Way Split

Klein’s Interest in Psychotic Conditions

Part-Objects

The Bad Breast

Splitting the Ego

Projective Identification

Narcissism

Klein’s View of Healthy Development

The Paranoid-Schizoid Position …

… and the Death Instinct

Preconceptions

The Fear of Death From Within

Persecutory Anxiety

A Projective Form of Identification

Transference

Counter-Transference

Bion’s Containing Function

Repetition and the Death Instinct

Klein’s Work on Envy

Defining Envy

Melanie Klein’s Death

Melanie Klein’s Continuing Legacy

Klein and Group Therapy

Klein and Feminism

Klein and Lacan

Further Reading

Little Dictionary and Index

Acknowledgements

Introducing Melanie Klein

Melanie Klein’s work was always uncompromising. She was determined to get to the most hidden depths of the human mind. Because she often unearthed such challenging aspects of ourselves, her writing might seem at first difficult and upsetting. She was aware that the concealed terrors and bliss of infancy would not find easy acceptance. Description of such primitive processes suffers from a great handicap. These phantasies arise at a time when the infant has not yet begun to think in words. Nevertheless, she believed that the health of the human race in the future depended on these levels of the mind becoming accessible and accepted.

Melanie’s Childhood

Born on 30 March 1882 in Vienna, Melanie felt unwanted as the youngest of the four children of Dr Moriz Reizes and Libussa Deutsch. Her father was orthodox Jewish, had been married before, and was 24 years older than Libussa, a reported beauty. He was not a particularly successful general practitioner.

I SUPPLEMENTED THE FAMILY INCOME BY WORKING IN A DENTAL PRACTICE AND AS ATTENDING PHYSICIAN TO A VAUDEVILLE ACT.

Libussa, out of keeping with the times, ran a shop for a while. Their children, Emilie born 1876, Emanuel in 1877, Sidonie in 1878, and Melanie, were all destined to have either brief or difficult lives. Sidonie died of tuberculosis aged eight (Melanie was then four), and Emanuel too died of tuberculosis, but at the age of twenty-five. Emilie survived childhood, but made a poor marriage to an alcoholic gambler.

Early Sorrows

Melanie, the only child not breast-fed by mother, had a wet nurse. Her father openly favoured Emilie. Clearly this start could have influenced Melanie in her desire to make sense of child development and depression.

Her psychoanalytic contributions uniquely stressed the raw, painful emotions of rage, envy and hatred as well as creativity, and she attributed such powerful feelings to children. She particularly stressed the very earliest relationship of all – to the mother’s breast.

Education and Marriage

Melanie longed for her father’s approval, and above all to achieve this through intellectual success. She entered the Vienna Gymnasium at sixteen and hoped to become a doctor like him. This changed when he died two years later in 1900. Emilie, recently wed, moved into the household with her alcoholic husband Leo Pick who continued the medical practice and supported the family. Libussa was a young and energetic widow.

I HAD LITTLE ELSE TO DO BUT PLAN AND ORGANIZE MY CHILDREN’S LIVES.

Next she sent Emanuel, ill with tuberculosis and addicted to drugs and alcohol, off to travel in Europe and pursue his ideal of a young sick artist.

Melanie admired this romantic brother and constantly strove for intellectual equality with him, and thus the approval which she had not gained from her parents. It was Emanuel who introduced her to Arthur Klein, her future husband.

ARTHUR’S INTELLECTUAL PROWESS MAKES HIM A GOOD CATCH.

BUT MARRIAGE MEANS THE END OF MY ACADEMIC STUDIES AND MY AMBITION TO BE A DOCTOR.

She seemed to accept this deal, probably under pressure from Libussa, to settle down and help relieve the financial burdens of the family.

A Destiny of Travel

Three months after the death of her brother Emanuel in December 1902, she married Arthur. This resulted in continual travelling in connection with his job as an engineer. A year later, in 1904, Melanie’s first child Melitta was born. She nursed the baby for seven months, until Arthur’s work took them both away and Melitta was cared for by Libussa and nannies.

I BECAME DEPRESSED DURING MY SECOND PREGNANCY. HANS WAS BORN IN 1907.

MENANIE’S DEPRESSION BECAME SO SEVERE THAT I MOVED IN.

I MOVED THE FAMILY TO SILESIA.

The notion of travel as an antidote to depression seems to have been strong in the family and may have contributed to some of Melanie’s later significant moves. For the two-and-a-half years that the Kleins lived in Silesia, Melanie was more often than not away.