MELANIE KLEIN: BIOGRAPHY, THEORY, CONTRIBUTIONS AND WORK - ARTE - 2025

Melanie Klein (1882-1960) was an Austrian psychoanalyst. She developed Sigmund Freud's Theory of Psychoanalysis and pioneered the creation of psychological therapies for children.

Klein formed her own theoretical school on child psychoanalysis and became the first European psychoanalyst to join the British Psychoanalytic Society. main opponent of the daughter of Sigmund Freud himself, Anna Freud.

Biography

Childhood

Melanie Klein was born on March 30, 1882 in Vienna. Her father, Moriz Reizes, the son of an Orthodox Jewish family, studied to be a doctor in the face of her family's religious beliefs.

Moriz married Libussa Deutsch, an attractive and intelligent woman from Slovakia twenty years his junior. From this marriage four children were born; Emilie, Emmanuel, Sidonie and little Melanie.

The biographer Phyllis Grosskurth rescues in his book Melanie Klein, some snippets of the life of the famous psychoanalyst. In them, Melanie recognizes that her arrival was unexpected but never felt she received less love for it. In these fragments she also talks about how the death of her sister Sidonie affected her, when Melanie was only four years old.

Sidonie died at eight years of scrofula, a type of tuberculosis. Little Melanie was very attached to her sister, and she always remembered her with great admiration for having taught her reading and arithmetic skills.

Adolescence

In 1898, at the age of 16, Melanie passed her entrance exams to Medicine, the career she had always dreamed of studying. These plans would soon be truncated, since the following year she meets her future husband Arthur Stevan Klein, a second cousin on her mother's side who was studying chemical engineering in Zurich.

In 1900, his father, Moriz Reizes, died at the age of 72. In this same year his sister Emilie married Dr. Leo Pick. Moriz Reizes' death triggered a crisis for Melanie and her family.

Two years later, in 1902 his brother Emmanuel died of a heart attack in Genoa, when he was only 25 years old. This death marked Melanie for her entire life, as she was very close to her older brother.

Medicine studies

It was Emmanuel who encouraged Melanie to study medicine and helped her enter the Gymnasium in Vienna. In fact, Melanie, she felt guilty all her life for this death.

Phyllis Grosskurth's book tells of Emmanuel self-destructing in the face of Melanie's incipient marriage to Arthur. Emmanuel suffered from fevers when he was only twelve years old, probably caused by previous tuberculosis.

These health problems led him to leave his academic studies to take a bohemian lifestyle, marked by alcohol and drugs. Still, Melanie always felt responsible for the fate that took her brother's life and thought that was how he would have liked her to feel.

Marriage

In 1903, when she had just turned 21, she finally married Arthur Klein. Arthur and Melanie Klein's bond was an unhappy marriage. They had three children, Melitta, Hans and Erich.

Melanie Klein's life was not easy, as it was marked by the deaths of loved ones and numerous depressive episodes that triggered a nerve problem.

Psychological problems

He had to undergo psychoanalytic treatments on numerous occasions. However, it was this health problem that made her know her vocation, since among the professionals who treated her are Sándor Ferenczi and Karl Abraham.

In 1914, when she became interested in the discipline of psychoanalysis, her husband went to war and her mother Libussa died of cancer.

The personal realm never smiled at him. After several attempts at reconciliation, Melanie and Arthur Klein parted ways. No other stable partner was known to her, except for a lover, Chezkel Zvi Kloetzel, a married man who would end up fleeing to Palestine due to the violence that the anti-Semitic movement took in Europe.

Conflicts with your daughter

The biggest blow at the family level would come later, at the hands of his own first-born and only daughter, Melitta Schmideberg. Although at first she supported the principles of child psychoanalysis established by her mother, she soon became an ally of Edward Glover.

With him, he set about boycotting his mother's theories at meetings of the British Psychoanalytic Society. Mother and daughter never made peace.

Death

In 1960 Melanie Klein was diagnosed with anemia and a few months later, colon cancer. Klein had to undergo an operation that, although a priori seemed to have been successful, led to a series of complications. Finally, she would die on September 22 of that same year.

Budapest. Her beginnings in Psychoanalysis

In 1914 the First World War broke out and Arthur Klein was called to form ranks. This same year Melanie Klein undergoes analysis with Sándor Ferenczi, a close friend of Freud.

In 1918 he heard Freud read live for the first time with the work Lines of Advance in Psychoanalitic Therapy. It is at the 5th Congress of Psychoanalysis at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest.

A year later, in July 1919, he presented the study on his five-year-old son, Erich, to the Hungarian Society for Psychoanalysis. Later she is awarded membership to this organization.

In 1920 he attended an International Congress in The Hague, where he met Joan Rivière for the first time.

Transfer to Berlin. The analysis of children begins

In 1921, on the occasion of the anti-Semitic current that began to invade Hungary, Klein moved to Berlin. It is from this transfer that Melanie begins her true career as a child psychoanalyst; he starts treating children, attends international conferences and becomes a member of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society.

Her friendship with the psychoanalyst Ernest Jones helped her in this career advancement, especially when she published an article by Melanie Klein, The Development of a Child in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. This article makes even Karl Abraham and Sigmund Freud talk about it.

During this stage, Melanie Klein befriends Alix Strachey. Thanks to her, her analyzes arouse interest in the British Society. Melanie Klein then begins to give a series of lectures in London with the support of Ernest Jones.

London. Consolidating your career

In 1926 he moved to London and began treating children, including the children of the Jones family and his own young son, Erich.

In 1927, its main detractor Anna Freud wrote to the Berlin Society for Psychoanalysis on the subject of the technique of analysis in children. Her presentation is an attack on Melanie Klein's approach to psychoanalysis.

In response, Ernest Jones organizes a symposium at the British Society on the same topic. Sigmund Freud comes to take this response as a personal attack on himself and his daughter.

Melanie Klein with Anna Freud

It was in London that Melanie established herself as a psychoanalyst and an international reference in this matter. At the International Youth Congress in Innsbruck that would take place in September she presented her article Early Stages of the Oedipus Complex (early stages of the Oedipus Complex).

Klein is elected to the British Society of Psychoanalysis on October 2, 1927. In 1932. She publishes her major theoretical work, T he Psychoanalysis of Children (The Psychoanalysis of Children), published simultaneously in English and German.

During this time, Melanie Klein attends Congresses in which she presents the development of her theory, explaining such important concepts about the depressive position.

World War II. Freud vs Klein

With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Sigmund and Anna Freud settled in London.

On February 25, 1942, the first extraordinary meeting of the British Psychoanalytic Society takes place. The enmity between its members is evident and the members of the committee are divided into two camps, Freudians and Kleinians.

During these years, the Freudian sector headed by Anna Freud and followed among others by Melitta, Melanie Klein's daughter, was dedicated to attacking her theories. They even question her training as a psychoanalyst.

The differences between one theory and the other will not be resolved until 1946. A center or conciliation team (Middle Group) is formed within the Society, which tries to harmonize the differences between the theory of Freud and Klein. In 1947, John Rickman, a member of this group, was elected president.

Melanie Klein theory: key aspects

Hannah Segal, in her book Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein, divides Melanie Klein's theoretical work into three phases:

1st Phase: Bases of child analysis

It begins with the publication of his article The development of a child and ends with The Psychoanalysis of Children. In these works, Melanie Klein affirms that the Oedipus Complex and the superego develop in very early stages of the child's development.

2nd Phase: Definition of the concept of depressive position

This concept is explained in his works A contribution to the Psychogenesis of the Manic Depressive States (1934) and Mourning and its Relation to Manic Depressive States (1940).

3rd Phase: Definition of the concept of the paranoid-schizoid position

This idea is developed in his article Notes on some Schizoid Mechanisms (1946) and in his book Envy and Gratitude (1957)

Melanie Klein's Contributions to the Theory of Psychoanalysis

The Oedipus Complex and the superego manifest at an early age

Melanie Klein shares with Sigmund Freud the concept of the Oedipus Complex, whereby the child wishes to take the place of the parent of the same sex, establishing a couple with their other parent.

Freud states that this phase occurs between three and five years. Instead, Klein believes that this complex occurs earlier than Freud establishes, with a first stage in which the child fantasizes about a body in which the sexual attributes of the father and the mother are united.

The child shows cruel characteristics related to the oral, the anal, etc., as a consequence of the projections of his own sexuality.

According to Melanie Klein, the frustration produced in children by weaning or incorporating foods into their diet, other than the mother's breast, plays an important role in this process.

The superego, according to Freudian theory, represents the ethical thoughts acquired by the culture, once the Oedipus complex has been overcome. Melanie Klein adds some modifications to this concept, since she believes that the superego is present in children from birth or since they are infants. She also affirms that the superego has to do with the feeling of guilt that occurs during the Oedipus complex.

Development of the concept of depressive position

In summary, it can be said that it is a recurring thought in the child. It manifests itself for the first time at the first year and a half of life and has to do with the anxiety that occurs in the child due to the fear of losing the beloved being-object, which is usually the mother.

Development of the concept of the paranoid-schizoid position

It is the stage before the depressive position. It occurs in the first months of the baby's life, although it can reappear in later episodes of the child's development. The child conceives of the mother as a part centered on his breast, which he perceives as a "good breast" when she feeds him and a "bad breast" when not.

In this phase, the baby's concern is due to concern for his own survival, rather than fear of losing the mother as occurs in the depressive position. At this stage the baby begins to conceive as a separate being from the mother.

You can delve more into the concepts of Melanie Klein's Theory by clicking here.

Kleinian Psychoanalysis Technique

Although Melanie Klein's technique is based on that of Sigmund Freud, there is an essential difference: clinical observation. Unlike Freud, it is based more on observation than on the abstraction of concepts.

Main works

The main works of Melanie Klein's Theory of Psychoanalysis are grouped into four volumes.

- Love, Guilt and Reparation and other works 1921-1945 («Love, guilt and reparation and other works 1921-1945»)

This publication includes articles on children's concerns, the Oedipus complex, and other later work on depressive states.

- The Psychoanalysis of children ("The psychoanalysis of children")

Published in 1932. Collects the child analysis technique carried out by Melanie Klein.

- Envy and Gratitude and other works 1946-1963 («Envy and Gratitude and other works 1946-1963»)

Here the concept of the paranoid-schizoid position is collected.

- Narrative of a Child Analysis (« Narrative of the Psychoanalysis of a child»)

This volume was published posthumously in 1961. In it, Melanie Klein collects psychoanalysis sessions with a ten-year-old boy.

You can see other works of Melanie Klein on her foundation page.