Melanie Klein (1882–1960)
Author of Envy and Gratitude and Other Works, 1946 - 1963
About the Author
Melanie Klein was born in Vienna, the fourth and youngest child of Jewish parents. Her childhood setting was a highly intellectual one, and, at the age of 14, she knew she wanted to study medicine. Her prospects came to an end when she married at an early age and became the mother of three show more children. Klein was a wife and mother when she entered psychoanalysis in 1912. Using insights that she gained from her psychoanalysis and applying them to disturbed children, she became the first major child psychologist. In 1919 she presented her first paper, "The Development of a Child," at a meeting of the Budapest Psychoanalytic Society. In 1921 she moved to Berlin and began developing her theory of mental functioning in young children and her analytic play technique. She moved permanently to London in 1926, where her theoretical framework created bitter controversy in the British Psychoanalytic Society. Klein's work with children remains influential, and her theoretical framework still enjoys considerable respect. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Works by Melanie Klein
New Directions in Psycho-Analysis: The Significance of Infant Conflict in the Pattern of Adult Behaviour (1955) — Editor — 37 copies
Relato del psicoanalisis de un nino / Story of Psychoanalysis of a Child (Spanish Edition) (1993) 4 copies
Grupprelationer : en antologi om förhållandena mellan individ, grupp och organisation (1984) 3 copies
The Psychoanalytic Play Technique 2 copies
Nuove vie della psicoanalisi 2 copies
Fantasmi, gioco e società 2 copies
Notes on some schizoid mechanisms 2 copies
Os progressos da psicanalise 1 copy
The origins of transference 1 copy
obras completas 1 1 copy
Mielen mosaiikki 1 copy
الحب والكراهية 1 copy
Associated Works
The elephant and the lotus : Vietnamese ceramics in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2007) — Editor — 5 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1882
- Date of death
- 1960
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- Austria (birth)
England
UK (residence) - Birthplace
- Vienna, Austria
- Place of death
- London, England, UK
- Places of residence
- Vienna, Austria
Budapest, Hungary
Berlin, Germany
London, England, UK - Occupations
- Psychoanalyst
- Relationships
- Sechehaye, Marguerite (colleague)
Members
Reviews
Psychotherapist Dr Judith Edwards has chosen to discuss Narrative of a Child Analysis by Melanie Klein on FiveBooks as one of the top five on her subject - Child Psychotherapy, saying that:
"...In Narrative of a Child Analysis Klein describes her work during the war with a 10-year-old school-refusing child, Richard, when they were both evacuated to Pitlochry. Unsurprisingly, Richard co-opts Hitler and the opposing armies and navies into his own private internal war, his Empire of Mum, as he called it, giving Klein the opportunity to show in detail day by day the unconscious conflicts and rivalries which had produced such profound anxiety in the boy. Richard wanted to be sole possessor of his mother’s love, to the exclusion of his father and brother. Here was Freud’s original notion of the Oedipus complex writ large..."
The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/judith-edwards-on-child-psychotherapy… (more)
"...In Narrative of a Child Analysis Klein describes her work during the war with a 10-year-old school-refusing child, Richard, when they were both evacuated to Pitlochry. Unsurprisingly, Richard co-opts Hitler and the opposing armies and navies into his own private internal war, his Empire of Mum, as he called it, giving Klein the opportunity to show in detail day by day the unconscious conflicts and rivalries which had produced such profound anxiety in the boy. Richard wanted to be sole possessor of his mother’s love, to the exclusion of his father and brother. Here was Freud’s original notion of the Oedipus complex writ large..."
The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/judith-edwards-on-child-psychotherapy… (more)
Psychoanalyst Dr David Bell has chosen to discuss Envy and Gratitude by Melanie Klein on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject - Psychoanalysis, saying that:
“…Melanie Klein is perhaps the most influential post-Freudian and, where Freud found the child in the adult and saw how all of us carry within us childhood thoughts, feelings and fantasies that have a determining effect on our lives, often unconsciously, Klein found the infant in the child. She developed a form of psychoanalysis that could access the internal life of quite young children.
She developed this through the play technique. So, where an adult is asked to free-associate, a child is invited to play with a box of toys or pens and paper. In the playing he expresses his own inner world. In the same way as it was shocking at the time that adults could express repressed desires, Klein’s way of talking to children also draws out sometimes very destructive impulses.
Envy and Gratitude is a mature work and more approachable than some of her others. Here Klein expresses the forms that envy and gratitude take. She develops the idea of a polarity between our relations to ‘the object’ (usually the mother). Gratitude is love and the capacity to take from the object and enjoy what we have taken, but, just as basic, is the disposition to envy. This is not ‘I wish I had that car’ but this is a hatred of the good. She quotes Chaucer as saying that all sins are sins against a particular virtue but that envy is the worst because it is a sin against virtue itself. ‘I hate that because it is good.’ …”
The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/david-bell… (more)
“…Melanie Klein is perhaps the most influential post-Freudian and, where Freud found the child in the adult and saw how all of us carry within us childhood thoughts, feelings and fantasies that have a determining effect on our lives, often unconsciously, Klein found the infant in the child. She developed a form of psychoanalysis that could access the internal life of quite young children.
She developed this through the play technique. So, where an adult is asked to free-associate, a child is invited to play with a box of toys or pens and paper. In the playing he expresses his own inner world. In the same way as it was shocking at the time that adults could express repressed desires, Klein’s way of talking to children also draws out sometimes very destructive impulses.
Envy and Gratitude is a mature work and more approachable than some of her others. Here Klein expresses the forms that envy and gratitude take. She develops the idea of a polarity between our relations to ‘the object’ (usually the mother). Gratitude is love and the capacity to take from the object and enjoy what we have taken, but, just as basic, is the disposition to envy. This is not ‘I wish I had that car’ but this is a hatred of the good. She quotes Chaucer as saying that all sins are sins against a particular virtue but that envy is the worst because it is a sin against virtue itself. ‘I hate that because it is good.’ …”
The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/david-bell… (more)
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Statistics
- Works
- 75
- Also by
- 2
- Members
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- Popularity
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- Rating
- 3.7
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- ISBNs
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En liant toutes les pulsions et comportements humains aux fantasmes sexuels est un raisonnement simpliste. Encore, comment attribuer des fantasmes aussi élaborés que les idées de conception et de grossesse via le père à un âge pré-scolaire?! C'est un peu erronné, exagéré, et insensé - malgré le fait qu'elles attribuent ces fantasmes à l'inconscient.… (more)