Melanie Klein

Background

Melanie Klein was born in Vienna on March 30, 1882. She was raised in a Jewish middle-class family.

Education

Educated at the Gymnasium, Klein planned to study medicine. But her family's loss of wealth caused her to change her plans. She studied art and history at the University of Vienna though she never completed her degree. She received a pedagogical education.

Career

After moving to Budapest, she chanced upon the works of Sigmund Freud, and was immediately drawn to psychoanalysis. After being analyzed by Sandor Ferenczi, she relocated to Berlin (with her three children but without her husband; they later divorced), and finally, in 1926, she accepted the invitation of Ernest Jones and settled in London, where her technical and theoretical creativity flourished.

Klein was keenly aware of the obstacles, theoretical, technical, and methodological, in attempting to penetrate the psyche of infants. To meet the challenge, she brought to bear an acute intuitive sense in extrapolating from adult and child psychoanalysis. Her language in describing the primitive inner life of infants is accordingly quite fantastic. Her unusual and striking images can daunt the uninitiated and have even deterred many psychoanalysts from accepting her ideas. Nevertheless, her work altered the theory of psychoanalysis.

Klein’s focus was not only upon innate drives and inner conflicts, which from the outset had marked psychoanalytic thinking. She also stressed the emotional ties with the outside world, consisting at first primarily of the mother. She w'as a founder of the object relations school of psychoanalysis.

In the politicized atmosphere of British psychoanalysis, Klein came into occasionally acrimonious conflict with Anna Freud over issues of technique and theory. In some of these conflicts, Klein’s daughter, Mclitta Schmideberg, also an analyst, took sides against her mother.

Achievements

• She was a leading innovator in object relations theory.
  
  Today, Kleinian psychoanalysis is one of the major schools within psychoanalysis. Kleinian psychoanalysts are members of the International Psychoanalytical Association. Kleinian psychoanalysis remains a large and influential school of psychoanalysis within Britain, in much of Latin America, and to an extent in continental Europe. Within the United States of America, the Psychoanalytic Center of California is the only major training center that follows the work of Melanie Klein.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Love, Guilt and Reparation: And Other Works 1921-1945 (The Writings of Melanie Klein, Volume 1)

    (This book shows the growth of Melanie Klein's work and id...)

  • Envy and Gratitude and Other Works, 1946 - 1963

    ( Tavistock Press was established as a co-operative ventur...)

  • Psychoanalysis of Children (Contemporary Classics)

Views

Quotations: "One of the many interesting and surprising experiences of the beginner in child analysis is to find in even very young children a capacity for insight which is often far greater than that of adults. "

"God has put something noble and good into every heart his hand has created. So while living on earth we must always remember to learn from yesterday, live for today, and hope for tomorrow because time will only show what has mattered throughout our journey. "

"The highly ambitious person, in spite of all his successes, always remains dissatisfied, in the same way as a greedy baby is never satisfied. "

"Feminism freed my mind. Yoga freed my body. It's one thing to intellectualize self-love and another to embody it. "

"My psycho-analytic work has convinced me that when in the baby's mind the conflicts between love and hate arise, and the fears of losing the loved one become active, a very important step is made in development. "

Membership

In 1919 she became a member of the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Society.

Connections

In 1903, Melanie married an industrial chemist, Arthur Klein (they later divorced). Three children were born in the marriage, but family life was unsuccessful. The mother had a bad relationship with her children.

Her son died in a climbing accident, that may have been a suicide, while her daughter, whom Klein had analysed as a child, the well-known psychoanalyst Melitta Schmideberg, fought her openly in the British Psychoanalytical Society.

husband:

Arthur Klein

Daughter:

Melitta Schmideberg

She was a psychoanalyst and author.

Son:

Hans

Son:

Erich

References

• Great Russian Encyclopedia