Between practice and theory: Melanie Klein, Anna Freud and the development of child analysis

Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 160-176

  Donaldson, Gail ^a  

^a YORK UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; AUSTRIA; CHILD; CHILD DEVELOPMENT; CHILD PSYCHIATRY; COMPARATIVE STUDY; HISTORY; HUMAN; PRESCHOOL CHILD; PSYCHOANALYSIS; PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY; UNITED KINGDOM;

AUSTRIA; CHILD; CHILD DEVELOPMENT; CHILD PSYCHIATRY; CHILD, PRESCHOOL; ENGLAND; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; PSYCHOANALYSIS; PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY;

EID: 0030116799     PISSN: 00225061     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-6696(199604)32:2<160::aid-jhbs4>3.0.co;2-%23     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. Andrew Paskauskas, Ed., The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones 1908-1939 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 624.
2. Melanie Klein, Joan Riviere, Nina Searl, Ella F. Sharpe, Edward Glover & Ernest Jones, "Symposium on Child-Analysis," International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 8 (1927): 339-391.
3. Retitled "Four Lectures on Child Analysis" in The Writings of Anna Freud, Volume 1. Introduction to Psychoanalysis: Lectures for Child Analysts and Teachers 1922-1935 (NY: International Universities Press, 1974).
4. Russell Viner, "Melanie Klein and Anna Freud: The Discourse of the Early Dispute," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 32 (1996): 4-15, p. 4.
5. Hermine Hug-Hellmuth was in fact the first analyst to treat children extensively; she published a summary of her work in 1921. Unfortunately her career was cut short when she was murdered in 1924 by her orphaned nephew. See George Maclean & Ulrich Rappen, Hermine Hug-Hellmuth: Her Life and Work (NY: Routledge, 1991).
6. Some readers may object to the characterization of psychoanalytic therapeutic technique as a scientific practice. I cannot digress into a lengthy philosophical discussion of the nature of science, at this point. Let us simply adopt a broad definition of science as a discipline of enquiry into the nature of things, involving systematic observation of the way things are and theory to explain those observations. As Freud saw it, psychoanalysis was a human science, with psychoanalytic technique serving as both a form of therapy and a mode of enquiry into human nature. By this definition of science, I would agree with him.
7. Except where indicated the account of Klein's life is taken from Phyllis Grosskurth, Melanie Klein: Her World and her Work (NY: Knopf, 1986).
8. Grosskurth's biography is the only source for this characterization of Klein's troubled relationship with her mother, but the account is based on reliable primary sources: Klein's letters from her mother and Klein's incomplete autobiography.
9. Quoted in Grosskurth, Melanie Klein, p. 71.
10. Retitled "The Development of a Child," in The Writings of Melanie Klein, Vol. 1 (NY: Free Press, 1975).
11. Reuben Fine, The History of Psychoanalysis (NY: Continuum, 1990).
12. Sandor Ferenczi, "Introjection and Transference," in Contributions to Psycho-Analysis, Ernest Jones, Trans. (London: Stanley Phillips, 1916), p. 35.
13. Ferenczi, "Introjection and Transference," p. 40.
14. Sigmund Freud, "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality," in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, James Starchey, Ed. (London: Hogarth, 1953-1964), Vol. 7.
15. Karl Abraham, "A Short Study of the Development of the Libido Viewed in the Light of Mental Disorders," in Selected Papers (London: Hogarth, 1957).
16. Melanie Klein, "A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Tics," in Writings, Vol. 1, p. 121.
17. Klein, "A Contribution," p. 123.
18. Perry Meisel & Walter Kendrick, Eds., Bloomsbury/Freud: The Letters of James and Alix Strachey (NY: Norton, 1990), p. 145.
19. Grosskurth, Melanie Klein, p. 126.
20. Meisel & Kendrick, Bloomsbury/Freud, p. 175.
21. Meisel & Kendrick, Bloomsbury/Freud, p. 189.
22. Melanie Klein, "The Development of a Child" (1921),
23. "Inhibitions and Difficulties at Puberty" (1922),
24. "The Role of the School in the Libidinal Development of the Child" (1923),
25. "Early Analysis" (1923),
26. "A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Tics" (1925),
27. and "The Psychological Principles of Early Analysis" (1926) all in Writings, Vol. 1.
28. Sigmund Freud, "The Ego and the Id," in The Standard Edition, Vol. 19, p. 40.
29. Melanie Klein, "The Psychological Principles of Early Analysis," in Writings, Vol. 1. The fact that the mother is also phantasied as a "mother-with-penis," or combined parent figure, complicates this picture of the super-ego. Klein did not envisage a super-ego based solely on introjection of the mother but saw it as consisting of imagos of various kinds based on both parents.
30. Melanie Klein, "The Psychoanalytic Play Technique: Its History and its Significance," in Writings, Vol. 3.
31. I refer to the child as "he" simply to avoid the confusion of pronouns that would arise if both Klein and the child patient were "she." At this stage in Klein's work the sex of the child is unimportant to her theorizing; Klein did not address the issue of sex differences in the Oedipus complex until later.
32. Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, James Strachey, Trans. (NY: Norton, 1964), p. 131.
33. Paskauskas, Ed., Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones.
34. Except where indicated this account of Anna Freud's life is taken from Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, Anna Freud: A Biography (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1988).
35. Paul Roazen, Freud and His Followers (NY: Knopf, 1975).
36. Anna Freud, "Beating Phantasies and Daydreams," in Writings, Vol. 1.
37. In 1966 Anna Freud wrote, in a "Short History of Child Analysis," Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Vol. 21: "None of the people were in a teacher-pupil relationship to each other. Ideas as well as techniques developed individually and independently" (8).
38. See Maclean & Rappen, Hermine Hug-Hellmuth for further discussion of this issue.
39. Anna Freud, "Four Lectures on Child Analysis," in Writings, Vol. 1.
40. Sigmund Freud, "From the History of an Infantile Neurosis (Wolf Man)," in The Standard Edition, Vol. 17, pp. 8-9.
41. Sigmund Freud, "Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy," in The Standard Edition, Vol. 10, p. 1.
42. Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, "On the Technique of Child Analysis," International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 2 (1921): 287-305.
43. Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, James Strachey, Trans. (NY: Norton, 1966), p. 434.
44. Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures, p. 131.
45. Melanie Klein, "Symposium on Child-Analysis," International Journal of Psychoanalysis 8 (1927): 339-370.
46. Ernest Jones, "Symposium on Child-Analysis," International Journal of Psychoanalysis 8 (1927): 387-391, p. 389.
47. Paskauskas, Ed., Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones.
48. These speculations are necessarily brief, but I shall make them the main focus of a future paper.
49. For an account of the later dispute between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, see Pearl King & Riccardo Steiner, Eds., The Freud-Klein Controversies 1941-1945 (London: Routledge, 1991).
50. For a discussion of the basic differences between the two schools of psychoanalytic thought, see Jay R. Greenberg & Stephen A. Mitchell, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).
51. Anna Freud, Writings, Vol. 1, p. xiii.
52. Anna Freud, Writings, Vol. 2: The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, p. 37.
53. See W. Ronald D. Fairbairn, Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality (London: Tavistock, 1952)
54. and Donald W. Winnicott, Through Paediatrics to Psycho-Analysis (NY: Basic, 1958).
55. Daniel N. Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology (NY: Basic, 1985), p. 17.
56. John Bowlby, Child Care and the Growth of Love (London: Pelican, 1953).
57. John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss: Volume 2. Separation: Anxiety and Anger (London: Hogarth, 1973), p. 11.
58. Mary D. S. Ainsworth, Mary C. Blehar, Everett Waters, & Sally Wall, Patterns of Attachment (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1978).
59. Otto Kernberg, "A Contribution to the Ego-Psychological Critique of the Kleinian School," International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 50 (1969): 317-333.
60. James S. Grotstein, "Foreword," in Otto Weininger, Melanie Klein: From Theory to Reality (London: Karnac, 1992).