MELANIE KLEIN

Melanie Klein

Melanie Klein

Introduction

Austrian-born psychoanalyst and pioneer of psychoanalysis of children. Born in Vienna, Klein apparently first came into contact with psychoanalytic literature in Berlin in 1914-15, at which point she went into analysis with Sandor Ferenczi; her earliest papers, written in 1921-3 (and now included in Klein, 1975a) are based upon the direct observation and analysis of her own children. After a move to Berlin, where a further analysis with Karl Abraham was truncated by his death, she began to work with young children and to develop her distinctive play technique. Contacts with English analysts subsequently led to an invitation to London, where Klein settled and lived until her death and where she immediately found a much more sympathetic audience than in Berlin. Increasingly she found herself in demand as both a child analyst and a training analyst. Klein's work is the single most important influence on the OBJECT-RELATIONS school. Always a controversial figure, her differences with Anna Freud over both theory and technique almost led to splits within the British Psychoanalytic Society; an actual schism was avoided by the establishment of Kleinian, FREUDian, and “Middle” groups within the same society. The Kleinian group is currently the largest.

Klein's play technique was born of the impossibility of analyzing young children on the couch and the realization that play is a form of work and therefore a possible means of communication. Play permits a representation of fantasies, wishes, and experiences, and free play is an equivalent of free association in adults. Children were allowed to play with collections of very small toys kept in special lockers, and with water, paper, and paste. Klein observed, discussed the games, and joined in as required. Her approach to games was based on a strict analytic orthodoxy. Play was a matter of manipulating and interpreting unconscious symbols and had no pedagogic content or goal. The technique resulted from the conviction that thought is, from the outset, a matter of how objects - both imaginary and real - are positioned in relation to one another and the SUBJECT. As a result, Klein was able to work with children aged as young as 3 years. Virtually all her theoretical contributions to Psychoanalysis emerge from her use of the play technique. It is a measure of Klein's success that a notion which seemed so controversial when it was first introduced now looks so commonplace.

Klein's work on the early Oedipus complex - which, she claimed, was observable at the beginning of the second year of life; Freud himself held that truly Oedipal feelings emerged between the ages of 3 and 5 - convinced her of the importance of the part-object, in her view an object for the child rather than for the instinct, as in Freud's original formulation. The breast, for instance, is ascribed properties on the basis of both the child's experience of its mother and the projection of its own fantasies. Thus the oral gratification afforded by the breast makes it “good”; its withdrawal or denial makes it ...