Melanie Klein
Austrian-British psychoanalyst and pioneer of play therapy
Austrian-born psychoanalyst without formal university training who developed play technique for analysing children and helped found object relations theory. She worked in London from 1926.
Why this person matters
Klein made children's play a basis for psychoanalytic interpretation and shifted attention to the infant's earliest relation to the mother. Her work divided psychoanalysts in Britain, most visibly in her dispute with Anna Freud.
Main contributions
Play technique
She treated children's play as a way for them to project feelings and unconscious motives, to be interpreted in therapy. She published The Psycho-Analysis of Children in 1932.
Object relations and positions
She described a paranoid-schizoid position, marked by splitting and persecutory fears, and a depressive position, marked by concern for a damaged loved object. Her 1946 paper 'Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms' belongs to this work.
Context and limits
Klein was criticised for suggesting that children can and should be analysed, with worries that probing a child's unconscious could do harm. At Ferenczi's urging she analysed her own children early in her career. Her emphasis on aggression led to conflict with Anna Freud in the Controversial Discussions of 1941 to 1945. Feminist critics argue that her work assumes a natural link between sex, gender and desire. The sources read report no experimental tests of her positions.
In your introductory course
Treatment and therapy.Appears in the therapy and personality chapters as the main alternative to Anna Freud and Sigmund Freud in child analysis, and as a source of object relations theory.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 16.1. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1919
Became a member of the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Society.
- 1922
Joined Karl Abraham's Psychoanalytic Institute in Berlin, where he oversaw her analysis.
- 1926
Joined the British society in London.
- 1932
Published The Psycho-Analysis of Children.
- 1946
Published 'Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms'.
Sources
- Psychology's Feminist Voices, Melanie KleinSociety or association. Institutional biography inspected.
- Wikipedia, Melanie KleinReference work. Reference article inspected.