klein
Within the depth-psychology corpus assembled by Seba, ‘Klein’ refers overwhelmingly to Melanie Klein (1882–1960), the Austrian-British psychoanalyst whose theoretical innovations — the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, projective identification, primary envy, the internal object world, and the play technique — constitute one of the most consequential revisions of Freudian metapsychology in the twentieth century. Klein’s own writings, concentrated here in the posthumously collected *Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946–1963*, display the mature architecture of her system: a theory of early ego-splitting, persecutory and depressive anxiety, the death instinct as organismic given, and envy as the primal destructive force assailing the good object. Beyond her own texts, the corpus registers Klein through the testimonies of colleagues and successors. Ernest Jones marks her contribution as definitively established and historically decisive for the psychoanalysis of psychosis; Winnicott acknowledges a formative personal debt while maintaining significant independence; Bion inherits and transforms her conceptual apparatus. Tensions recorded in the corpus include the Controversial Discussions with Anna Freud’s school, epistemological debates over the status of infant fantasy, and Winnicott’s quiet dissent on the question of the facilitating environment. Isolated references to ‘Klein’ naming other figures — a Canadian poet, a pharmacologist — appear in bibliographic passages and carry no psychodynamic significance.
This is one of Melanie Klein’s most important works. It presents for the first time a detailed account of the psychic processes that occur in the first three months of life.
This passage identifies ‘Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms’ as Klein’s inaugural systematic account of the paranoid-schizoid position and the concept of projective identification, framing her contribution as a foundational advance in psychoanalytic metapsychology.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis
A series of Controversial Discussions on Melanie Klein’s work was organized in the British PsychoAnalytical Society during 1943 and 1944.
This passage situates Klein’s theoretical work within the institutional controversy of the British Psychoanalytical Society, mapping the collaborative and contested production of her mature positions on anxiety and guilt.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis
the infant has innate unconscious knowledge of a unique and good object, the mother’s breast.
This passage articulates one of Klein’s most contested theoretical hypotheses — the innate knowledge of the good breast — presented here as a long-presupposed axiom made explicit in her mature work.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis
she connects schizophrenia with the psychotic persecutory anxieties of the first three months of life, and gives also a detailed account… of the connection between manic-depressive illness and the unresolved persecutory and depressive anxieties
This passage traces Klein’s systematic linkage between infantile psychotic anxiety and adult psychopathology, demonstrating her claim that schizophrenia and manic-depression have their roots in unresolved positions of early infancy.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis
she here suggests that the superego develops with the two instincts predominantly in a state of fusion, and that the terrifying internal figures which result from intense destructiveness do not form part of the superego.
This passage documents a significant late revision in Klein’s theory of the superego, where terrifying internal objects are reconceived as split off from both ego and superego and residing in a separate stratum of the deep unconscious.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis
psycho-analysis, firmly based on Freud, shall not miss Klein’s contribution which I shall now attempt to summarize: Strict orthodox technique in psycho-analysis of children.
Winnicott offers a systematic enumeration of Klein’s contributions — play technique, internal objects, projection and introjection, destructive elements in object relations — while insisting they must be integrated into, not substituted for, Freudian orthodoxy.
, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, 1965thesis
I arrived at the conclusion that before terminating an analysis I have to ask myself whether the conflicts and anxieties experienced during the first year of life have been sufficiently analysed and worked through.
Klein here applies her developmental schema — paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions — directly to the clinical question of termination, arguing that analytic work is incomplete unless the earliest infantile conflicts have been fully worked through.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis
Mrs Klein’s boldness did not stop at the study of normal and neurotic infantile development. She has extended it into the field of insanity itself.
Ernest Jones’s envoi credits Klein with extending psychoanalytic inquiry into psychosis by identifying an inner relation between infantile positions and adult schizophrenia and manic-depressive illness, calling her work ‘firmly established.’
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957supporting
Melanie Klein’s approach enabled me to work on the infantile conflicts and anxieties and primitive defences whether the patient was child or adult.
Winnicott credits Klein’s clinical framework as the enabling condition for his own analytic work with primitive defences, while situating her contribution as a transitional stage that his own theory of the facilitating environment moves beyond.
, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, 1965supporting
basic assumptions now emerge as formations secondary to an extremely early primal scene worked out on a level of part objects, and associated with psychotic anxiety and mechanisms of splitting and projective identification such as Melanie Klein has described as characteristic of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions.
Bion grounds his theory of group basic assumptions in Klein’s account of paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, treating her concepts of splitting and projective identification as foundational to the psychodynamics of group life.
, Experiences in Groups and Other Papers, 1959supporting
splitting and projective mechanisms described by Melanie Klein (1946). Not only have they divested themselves of any of the troubles of the woman patient
Bion applies Klein’s 1946 account of splitting and projective identification directly to the clinical analysis of group behavior, showing how group members use these mechanisms to disavow individual disturbance.
, Experiences in Groups and Other Papers, 1959supporting
It was an important moment in my life when my analyst broke into his analysis of me and told me about Melanie Klein. She is saying some things that may or may not be true, and you must fi
Winnicott’s autobiographical account of his introduction to Klein via Strachey marks a decisive turning point in his intellectual development, conveying the initial atmosphere of both excitement and uncertainty with which Klein’s ideas were received.
, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, 1965supporting
Melanie Klein (1930) has shown that the inability to form symbols is characteristic of certain individuals, I would extend this to include all individuals in their functions as
Bion appropriates Klein’s 1930 finding on symbol formation failure and extends it from individual psychopathology to a universal feature of group functioning, illustrating his characteristic strategy of generalizing her clinical concepts.
, Experiences in Groups and Other Papers, 1959supporting
Ernest Jones had invited Melanie Klein to practise in London and had entrusted her with his own two children for child analysis based on her new technique of play therapy.
This passage documents the institutional circumstances of Klein’s establishment in London and sets the scene for the contested atmosphere of the British Psychoanalytical Society in which Bowlby trained and against whose Kleinian orientation he would eventually rebel.
, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Makers of Modern, 2014supporting
a key issue was whether Melanie Klein was a Freudian, it will not come as a surprise to analytical psychologists (who have, as may be seen throughout this book, their own version of
Samuels identifies the question of Klein’s Freudian legitimacy as structurally parallel to post-Jungian debates about fidelity to Jung, using it to illuminate how theoretical schools police their own boundaries through appeals to an originary authority.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
the patient had already to some extent established a relation to a complete good object. He had no doubt already entered the depressive position but could not work through it successfully and the paranoid-schizoid position became regressively reinforced.
Klein presents a clinical case demonstrating the explanatory power of her developmental schema, showing how regression from the depressive position to the paranoid-schizoid position produces the apathy and disturbance observed in early object-loss.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957supporting
in Klein’s writings the reference is to the aggression that is associated with the frustrations that inevitably disturb instinctual satisfactions as the child begins to be affected by the demands of reality.
Winnicott glosses Klein’s concept of the primitive love impulse as essentially tied to frustration-driven aggression, using this characterization to mark the boundary between her framework and his own emphasis on the facilitating environment.
, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, 1965supporting
the transference situation—the backbone of the psychoanalytic procedure—can only be established and maintained if the patient is able to feel that the consulting-room or the play-room, indeed the whole analysis, is something separate from his ordinary home life.
Klein articulates the technical rationale for the analytic setting in child analysis, drawing on her own early case experience to establish the principle that transference requires a space insulated from the domestic environment.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957supporting
her work is firmly established. As a result of her personal instruction, combined with the insight of those who decided to accept it, she has a considerable number of colleagues and pupils who follow her lead in exploring the deepest depths.
Jones’s valedictory assessment emphasizes the institutional consolidation of Klein’s work through personal instruction and the formation of a school, situating her legacy as already secured at the time of writing.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957aside
Klein, M. (1957). Envy and Gratitude. (London: Tavistock)
This bibliographic entry from Klein’s collected writings provides the canonical publication record of her major works, serving as a reference apparatus for the volume’s scholarly apparatus.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957aside
The hypothesis which I have broadly outlined here represents a much wider view of early unconscious processes than was implied in Freud’s concept of the structure of the mind.
Klein explicitly frames her metapsychological hypotheses as an expansion of the Freudian structural model, requiring reassessment of the ego, superego, and their earliest relational formations.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis
These functional disturbances which, according to M. Ribble’s observation, may amount to a danger to life, could be interpreted as an expression of the death instinct which, according to Freud, is primarily directed against the organism itself.
Klein links neonatal physiological vulnerability to her theoretical commitment to the death instinct as the biological root of persecutory anxiety and the fear of annihilation.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis
Synthesis between feelings of love and destructive impulses towards one and the same object — the breast — gives rise to depressive anxiety, guilt and the urge to make reparation to the injured loved object, the good breast.
Klein defines the depressive position as the developmental achievement of ambivalence, wherein integration of love and hate toward the part-object inaugurates guilt and the reparative impulse.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis
envy gives particular impetus to these attacks… when I wrote about the greedy scooping out of the breast and of the mother’s body, and the destruction of her babies… this adumbrated what I later came to recognize as the envious spoiling of the object.
Klein retrospectively reconstitutes her earlier accounts of oral sadism as adumbrations of the concept of primary envy, positioning envy as the deepest motor of destructive phantasy.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis
if envy is strong, goodness cannot be assimilated, become part of one’s inner life, and so give rise to gratitude. By contrast, the capacity to enjoy fully what has been received, and the experience of gratitude towards the person who gives it, influence strongly both the character and the relations with other people.
Klein articulates the clinical and characterological stakes of her envy-gratitude polarity: the capacity to assimilate goodness determines the entire emotional and relational economy of the person.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis
If envy of the feeding breast is strong, the full gratification is interfered with because… it is characteristic of envy that it implies robbing the object of what it possesses, and spoiling it.
Klein specifies the structural logic by which primary envy disrupts the infant’s enjoyment of the good breast and thereby obstructs the formation of gratitude and the depressive position.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis
even under very favourable conditions, the conflict between love and hate (or, to put it in Freud’s terms, between destructive impulses and libido) plays an important rôle in this relation. Frustrations… strengthen hate and aggressiveness.
Klein grounds her developmental theory in the constitutive conflict between libido and the death instinct, insisting that frustration amplifies envy and greed even under optimal environmental conditions.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis
I regard the id as identical with the two instincts. Freud has in many places spoken about the id, but there are some inconsistencies in his definitions.
Klein aligns her metapsychology with the dual-instinct theory by equating the id with life and death instincts, thereby anchoring her structural revisions to Freud’s own inconsistencies.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis
the excessive splitting off and expelling into the outer world of parts of itself considerably weaken it. For the aggressive component of feelings and of the personality is intimately bound up in the mind with power, potency, strength, knowledge and many other desired qualities.
Klein describes the ego-weakening consequences of excessive projective processes, showing how the expulsion of aggression paradoxically impoverishes the self of qualities it most desires.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis
The mood of the patient at that time was characterized by depression; guilt towards the analyst and the wish to preserve her were prominent. In this context, the fear of integration was caused by the feeling that the analyst must be protected from the patient’s repressed greedy and dangerous impulses.
Klein presents clinical material illustrating how fear of one’s own destructiveness can paradoxically impede the integration that the depressive position requires.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957supporting
The analyst who went away with the two or three petits fours stood not only for the breast which was withheld, but also for the breast which was going to feed itself.
Through dream interpretation, Klein demonstrates how the analytic figure is libidinally invested as the withholding breast, condensing envy, grievance, and the patient’s identification with the analyst.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957supporting
Obsessional features can be observed in bedtime rituals, rituals to do with cleanliness or food and so on, and in a general need for repetition… These phenomena, though part of the child’s normal development, can be described as neurotic symptoms.
Klein traces obsessional symptomatology in normal toddler development to the working-through of oral, urethral, and anal anxieties, linking persecutory and depressive dynamics to everyday neurotic formations.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957supporting
my experience has taught me that nevertheless we are able in a number of cases to produce fundamental and positive changes, even where the constitutional basis was unfavourable.
Klein affirms the therapeutic efficacy of psychoanalysis even in constitutionally unfavourable cases, while acknowledging the irreducible role of innate factors in character and pathology.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957supporting
nothing that ever existed in the unconscious completely loses its influence on the personality… I have tried to convey the importance of the interaction between innate factors and the influence of the environment.
Klein articulates the enduring impact of unconscious phantasy on adult character and insists on the dialectic between constitutional endowment and environmental experience throughout development.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957supporting
persecutory anxiety is stirred up by the destructive instinct and is constantly fed by the projection of destructive impulses on to objects. For it is inherent in the nature of persecutory anxiety that it increases hatred and attacks against the object who is felt to be persecutory.
Klein explicates the self-reinforcing cycle linking the death instinct, projection, and persecutory anxiety that defines the paranoid-schizoid position.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957supporting
Freud’s formulation of mental structure in terms of id, ego and superego has become the basis for all psychoanalytic thinking… the ego reaches deep down into the id and is therefore under the constant influence of unconscious processes.
Klein situates her metapsychological contribution as a continuation of Freudian structural theory, claiming to extend rather than supplant the foundational concepts of id, ego, and superego.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957supporting
anyone who is looking out for young talents and who helps to develop them… is only able to do so because he can identify with others; in a sense he is repeating his own life, sometimes even achieving vicariously the fulfilment of aims unfulfilled in his own life.
Klein extends her object-relations framework to social and cultural generativity, arguing that identification and sublimated envy underlie mentorship and creative patronage in adult life.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957supporting
because the mother did not come when she was longed for, she turned in the child’s mind into the bad (persecuting) mother, and that for this reason the child did not seem to recognize her and was frightened of her.
Klein illustrates through infant observation how maternal unavailability precipitates the transformation of the good object into the persecutory object, providing empirical grounding for her theoretical constructs.
, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957supporting
All of the facts in this paragraph come from Klein (2004, 2007) except for the fact about intellectual property rights, which comes from Keyder (2005).
A bibliographic citation in Alexander’s addiction study refers to a different Klein — Naomi Klein — whose political-economic writings on globalisation are cited in a footnote, without psychodynamic relevance.
, The Globalisation of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, 2008aside