Introducing Melanie Klein E-Book

R. D. Hinshelwood

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Graphic Guides
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 103

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

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.

Leseprobe

Published by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39–41 North Road, London N7 9DPemail: [email protected] 

ISBN: 978-184831-779-6

Text copyright © 1997 Robert Hinshelwood and Susan RobinsonIllustrations 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.

SHE WAS ABSENT FOR PERHAPS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT AND DRAMATIC MOMENTS IN THE LIVES OF HER TWO OLDER CHILDREN.

One may wonder if Melanie’s sense of guilt and loss at missing these early years, and at being emotionally unavailable due to her depression, led her later to “experiment” in child psychoanalytic techniques with her own children.

Struggles with Libussa

Libussa, unhelpfully, kept Melanie informed all the time she was away with reports of the children’s crying and missing their mother.

MUTTI! MUTTI!AT THE SAME TIME, IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU SHOULD KEEP AWAY FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR OWN HEALTH.SHE HAS EFFECTIVELY SUPPLANTED ME AS HEAD OF THE HOUSEHOLD, AS PARTNER TO ARTHUR AND MOTHER OF MY CHILDREN.

Libussa reported, too, how well the children were developing without their mother. In 1909, Melanie was admitted to a sanatorium in Switzerland for two months.

Libussa and Melanie, lifelong rivals it seems for the men in their lives – first Moriz, then Emanuel and finally Arthur – were inseparable. Arthur realized he had to move out of the social backwater of Silesia and took the family to Budapest.

A YEAR LATER, IN 1911, LIBUSSA HAD MOVED INTO THE HOUSEHOLD AGAIN, SEEMINGLY PERMANENTLY.

This time, instead of depression, fierce battles ensued between Melanie and Libussa over control of the household and the children. No doubt this period had its toll on the development of the children. Melitta, as if following suit, eventually engaged in bitter public battles with her mother.

The First World War

1914 was a fateful year for Melanie. Not only did the First World War start, but Libussa died a few months after Melanie had her third child, Erich. In addition, Arthur went away to war, a traumatizing experience from which he, and the marriage, never recovered.

AFTER ERICH’S BIRTH, MY TRAVELS BEGAN TO BE INTERNAL ONES.

Melanie wrote poetry and short stories, and above all she “discovered” psychoanalysis by reading Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) in that year. And she started her own analysis with Sandor Ferenczi (1873–1933).

Analysis with Ferenczi

At that time, Arthur worked in the same office of a paper mill with Ferenczi’s brother, while Emilie’s son Otto Pick was Freud’s dentist in Vienna. Such links amongst Jewish intellectuals in Vienna and Budapest were common enough. Melanie’s analysis with Ferenczi occurred, perhaps intermittently, during the First World War.

I ACCOMPANIED FREUD AND JUNG ON THEIR LECTURE TOUR IN 1909 TO CLARK UNIVERSITY IN THE USA.

He became the Freud’s right-hand man after Jung departed from the psychoanalytic movement around 1913. Ferenczi worked in Budapest (in the other half of the Austro-Hungarian empire) and founded the Hungarian Psycho-Analytical Society in 1913, the first such society outside Vienna. He analyzed Ernest Jones in 1913, and after the War he became President of International Psycho-Analytical Society.

The First World War interrupted psychoanalytic practice, but provided a unique opportunity to develop theories of unconscious processes and the effects of trauma on psychological health. The psychoanalytic understanding and treatment of shell-shock was a long way ahead of any other psychological theory or practice as a way of understanding this form of “war neurosis”. And this success dramatically promoted the optimism and growth of the movement.

First Encounter with Child Analysis

In those days the relationship between analyst and analysand was very informal, and Ferenczi encouraged Melanie Klein to take an interest in her children psychoanalytically. In that sense, it is probably fortunate for the world of psychoanalysis that she entered into analysis with Ferenczi rather than Freud.

FERENCZI WAS FREE IN HIS THINKING AND ENCOURAGED HIS ANALYSANDS TO DEVELOP AN UNINHIBITED, CREATIVE APPROACH.I SUPPORTED MELANIE AS A GIFTED, INTELLIGENT WOMAN WHO HAD A SPECIAL INTEREST IN AND TALENT FOR UNDERSTANDING CHILDREN, AND THIS ENABLED HER TO FEEL CONFIDENT IN JOINING AND CONTRIBUTING TO THE MOVEMENT.

Ferenczi had noted Melanie’s acute observational skills with children and appointed her clinical assistant, though untrained, to work with him at the Association of Child Research. Thus she moved easily from being a patient to contributing to psychoanalysis itself.

Her drive to be like her father resembled that of Anna Freud, and this may be an influential factor in their later rivalrous battles. In 1919 she gave a paper to the Hungarian Psycho-Analytical Society about child development and schooling that was based on her observations and discussions with her own children. She was admitted as a psychoanalyst on the basis of this paper. By this time, she was also taking her daughter Melitta (then aged fifteen) to meetings of the Society.

Given her frustrated ambition to follow as a doctor in her father’s footsteps, perhaps Melanie found a substitute in the world of psychoanalysis.

AT THAT TIME, IT WAS A PROFESSION DOMINATED BY MEN, WITH MALE SUPREMACY TAKEN AS A GIVEN.

The Little Hans Case

Analyzing one’s own children was a widely adopted method amongst analysts wishing to contribute further to the results of Freud’s “Little Hans” case.

LITTLE HANS, A 4½-YEAR-OLD BOY, WAS ANALYZED THROUGH CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN THE CHILD AND HIS FATHER, WHICH THE FATHER THEN REPORTED TO ME FOR MY COMMENTS AND DIRECTION.

5-YEAR-OLD HANS HAD A ‘PHOBIA’ ABOUT HORSES.I WON’T GO OUT ... A HORSE MIGHT BITE ME!

HIS FATHER CONSULTED FREUD.IT STARTED WHEN HIS BABY SISTER WAS BORN ...

I’M GOING TO HAVE A LITTLE GIRL ...YOU’D LIKE THAT?

YES, NEXT YEAR I’LL HAVE ONE.WHY SHOULDN’T MUMMY HAVE ONE?

BECAUSE I WANT ONE FOR A CHANGE!ONLY WOMEN HAVE CHILDREN.

HANS BECAME INTERESTED IN HIS PENIS-AND HIS FATHER’S

When this “analysis” was taking place in 1908, Freud had just worked out in detail his view of the progress a child makes through various phases – oral, anal and genital – to reach an interim period (a latency phase, setting in around three or four years of age) before adolescence.

MASTURBATION WAS ‘TYPICALLY’ DISCOURAGED.IF THE DOCTOR CUTS IT OFF ... WHAT’LL YOU WIDDLE WITH?WITH MY BOTTOM!

HANS CONTINUED HIS RESEARCH.WHAT ARE YOU STARING LIKE THAT FOR?TO SEE IF YOU’VE GOT A WIDDLER TOO.

DIDN’T YOU KNOW THAT?

I THOUGHT SINCE YOU’RE SO BIG YOU’D HAVE ONE LIKE A HORSE!

HE HAS DISPLACED HIS FEAR OF YOU ON TO HORSES ...WHY SHOULD HE FEAR ME?

YOU’RE BIGGER ... AND YOU MIGHT THREATEN CASTRATION BECAUSE HE DESIRES HIS MOTHER.

VERY STRANGE!PERFECTLY NORMAL PHASE OF INFANCY.WHAT SHOULD WE DO?

TALK TO HIM ... SAY YOU APPROVE THAT ONE DAY HE’LL BE AS BIG AS YOU.