Melanie Reizes (1882-1960), who later adopted the surname Klein, was born in Vienna. Her father, Moriz Reizes, belonged to a simple, very religious Jewish family and lived in Lviv, at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, currently part of Ukraine.
At that time in that city (and until 1939, the year the Second World War began) the use of the following languages was common or very frequent: Ukrainian, Polish, Yiddish, Russian and German and even Romanian. Moriz Reizes was destined to be a rabbi and marry a young woman chosen by his parents, whom he did not meet before the wedding. He was a cultured and polyglot man (he spoke ten languages). He pursued a career in medicine, breaking with the orthodox tradition imposed by the family. He began practicing his profession, and at age 37, he divorced his first wife. Three years later he met Libussa Deutsch, much younger than him, in Vienna. She belonged to a cultured family, in which both her father and grandfather were rabbis. Libussa and Moriz married in 1875 and settled in Deutsch-Krentz. In 1876 Emilie was born, in 1877 Emanuel and the following year, Sidonie.
The family moved to Vienna, where Melanie was born in 1882. Moriz dedicated himself to dentistry and his wife opened a business selling plants, which she ran until 1907. In 1886 Sidonie died of scrofula (a variant of tuberculosis), when Melanie was four years old. Sidonie had introduced her to reading and mathematics.
Her brother Emanuel supports Melanie when, at the age of fourteen, she decides to study medicine (in the field of psychiatry) and prepares her to enter the Gym from Vienna.
At 17, Melanie Reizes becomes engaged to Arthur Stevan Klein, a 21-year-old industrial chemist and friend of Emanuel. At this time she abandoned the idea of studying medicine and attended history and art courses at the University of Vienna.
At the beginning of 1900 her father, Moriz Reizes, died, and at the end of that year Emilie married the doctor Leo Pick. Emilie will die in London in 1940.
In December 1902, Emanuel, who had been ill for years with rheumatoid fever, died in Genoa. His relationship with his younger sister was very close and complex.
Family
Melanie married on March 31, 1903, when she had just turned 21. During the four years of their engagement they have been separated for a long time, due to Arthur's studies. They settled in Rosenberg (Hungary) and the following year Melitta was born. In 1906 Hans was born and a year later they moved to Kappitz, a small town, because of Arthur's work. Melanie Klein appears affected by a strong and prolonged depressive state, for which her husband obtains a transfer to Budapest in 1910. In 1913 Ernest Jones returns to Europe and is analyzed by Sándor Ferenczi, that same year he founded the London Psychoanalytic Society. On July 1, 1914, Erich was born. At the end of that year, Libussa, her mother, died, who had a strong influence on Melanie. This aggravates her depression and she begins analyzing her with Ferenczi, also becoming interested in Sigmund Freud's writings about dreams. Both Ferenczi and Arthur Klein joined the Austro-Hungarian army and in 1916 Melanie's husband returned as a war invalid, wounded in the leg. The marriage faces serious difficulties.
Dedication to psychoanalysis
In 1918 he attended the 5th International Psychoanalytic Congress, chaired by Ferenczi, in which Freud reads “Lines of Advances in Psychoanalytic Therapy”. This Congress held in times of war made a strong impression on Klein and, as she herself recalls: “that impression strengthened my desire to dedicate myself to psychoanalysis.”
“During the analysis with Ferenczi, he drew my attention to my great gifts for understanding children and my interest in them and greatly encouraged my idea of devoting myself to the analysis of children. (…) I have not seen (…) that education could cover the entire understanding of personality and that, therefore, it has the influence that one would wish it to have. I always felt that there was something behind it that I never perceived.”
Ferenczi assigns her as Anton von Freund's assistant in the task of organizing the teaching of psychoanalysis at the Children's Research Society.
In 1919 Jones reorganized the British Psychoanalytic Society. In July of that year Klein exhibited his first work, “Der Familienroman in statu nascendi” (published in 1920 in IZP) for which she is accepted as a member of the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Society, which was in a period of intense activity under Ferenczi's presidency.
Soon the position of the Jewish professionals residing in Budapest was greatly affected by the post-war political situation. Arthur Klein is unable to continue his work and moves to Sweden, subsequently obtaining Swedish citizenship.
Melanie Klein moves with her children to Slovakia, where she stays at her in-laws' house for a year.
In 1920, he attended the 6th International Psychoanalytic Congress in The Hague. He meets Hermine von Hug-Hellmuth, who reads his work on the technique of child analysis, and Karl Abraham.
Abraham, president of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, invites her to work in that city. Klein moves in with Erich.
In 1921, Melanie and Arthur divorced.
In 1922 Klein became an associate member of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Association (in that same year, Anna Freud became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association).
A year later he became a full member of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Association and worked at the Institute.
At the beginning of 1924 Klein began his analysis with Abraham, which would continue until his death in December 1925.
Theoretical contributions
That period is extremely productive, he presented for the first time before a conference “The technique of analysis of young children” at the 8th Congress of International Psychoanalysis, in Salzburg, whose president is Abraham. Ernest Jones listens to his presentation with great interest. It is also during 1924 that he presented the work “Psychological principles of infantile analysis” to the Vienna Society and, at the end of that year, “An obsessive neurosis in a 6-year-old girl” (Erna) at the First Conference of German Psychoanalysts, in Wurzburg.
He meets Alix Strachey, Abraham's analysand, who is interested in his theories and collaborates in translating some of his writings into English. It is through her husband, James Strachey, that Klein's work reaches the British Society, where the possibility of analyzing children was debated with great interest. Edward Glover's criticisms are recorded in the minutes of said presentation.
In July 1925, Klein gave six lectures in London over three months, invited by E. Jones. Abraham was already ill and had suspended his analyzes for an indeterminate period. She is well received and, among others, meets Susan Isaacs.
After Abraham's death, opposition to Kleinian theories in the Berlin Society intensified noticeably. Another factor that is added to the disappearance of his mentor is an episode that has an unfavorable impact on the acceptance of the deep investigation of the child's unconscious: Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, director of the Vienna Child Guidance Center, is murdered by an 18-year-old relative. years, to which she had applied her technique when she was little. This case has wide public impact.
Finally Klein decided to leave Berlin and in September 1926 she arrived in England, invited by Ernest Jones for a year, in order to analyze his children and his wife. Erich arrives in London shortly after, Hans is in the custody of his father and remains studying in Berlin. Melitta has married Dr. Walter Schmideberg and is studying at the University of Berlin. E. Jones, president of the British Society and a great promoter of psychoanalysis, had been interested in the application of analysis to children since 1920.
In March 1927 Anna Freud spoke about the technique of child analysis before the Berlin Society, in clear opposition to Klein. The written contribution sent by this one, who still belongs to said Society, is not circulated. Anna publishes Einführung in die Technik der Kinderanalyse (Introduction to the technique of child analysis). In May of the same year, Jones organized a symposium on child analysis among members of the British Society. The existing London-Vienna tension is evident in the correspondence between Freud and Jones.
From May 4 to 18, 1927, the Symposium takes place, in which the main themes of the controversy between the British group and the Viennese group are presented. This event can be considered foundational with respect to the extension of the field of psychoanalysis to children.
On October 2 of that year Klein was elected plenary member of the British Society. The period 1928-39 is the most productive in the life of M. Klein.
In 1930 Melitta, already graduated, settled in London and her participation in the Society became intense.
In 1932, “Children's Psychoanalysis” was published, the most important work published by a member of the British Society to date. In this work he formulated two important concepts in his theory: the paranoid-schizoid position and the depressive position.
From the psychoanalytic perspective of Melanie Klein, personal development is conceived as enrichment of the personality that refers to the overcoming of early stages of childhood (which can re-emerge in adult life), the overcoming of the conflicts that these stages They entail, like anxiety, guilt, envy and achieving gratitude, achieving balance with the internal psychic world and the external world, and developing the ability to enjoy things and have rewarding relationships of love with others.
Of these early stages, two are the most important in life according to Klein. The first is the paranoid-schizoid position that develops during the first 3 to 4 months of life. According to Klein, human beings have two basic instincts, that of life or love and that of death or hate, due to the struggle that occurs between these two instincts and the feeling of persecutory anxiety that occurs in the child, a product of the fear of If this aggressive impulse causes harm, the child carries out splitting processes, in which hatred and anxiety are projected towards the first object of relationship that he or she has, which is the mother's breast, which would become the bad breast. , and the feelings of love are projected onto the good gratifying breast (Klein, M. 1988). After this projection, the good and bad breasts are introjected into the child's psyche, so the ego is very poorly integrated, as it has separate contents. This projection and subsequent introjection help to reduce persecutory anxiety, since the child feels safer with a good breast that protects him, but at the same time he has a bad breast, which persecutes him and the fear of the annihilation of the self persists. . From this interaction between 4 - 6 months the impulses are integrated, and the mother is no longer seen in a split form, but is incorporated as a total object, moving to the position that Klein calls depressive, in which due to this integration of the object and the self, guilt is experienced, since the child feels that the loved object has been damaged by his own aggressive impulses; and for which he tries to repair the damaged object. “The feeling that the damage done to the loved object is caused by the subject's aggressive impulses is for me the essence of guilt. The impulse to cancel or repair this damage comes from feeling that the subject himself has caused it, that is, from guilt. Therefore, the reparative tendency can be considered as a consequence of the feeling of guilt. (Klein, 1988. 45 pp).
The 12th International Congress of Psychoanalysis is held in Wiesbaden, the last one held in Germany before the war and the only one that Klein does not attend; This avoids confrontations with Ferenczi who supports the Viennese school. Ferenczi died in 1933 and that year marked the beginning of a difficult time in Klein's life. Melitta is elected a full member of the Society and begins an analysis with E. Glover. From this moment on, strong opposition to Klein's theories and person was generated by both, which would take on disproportionate proportions within British Society, generating a long period of intense disputes and party fragmentations.
In April 1934 Klein's second son, Hans, died in an accident. This affected her very intensely. In that year she became an English citizen, this being possible because of her Swedish passport. In 1935, exchange conferences between London and Vienna began. Anna Freud publishes “The Ego and Defense Mechanisms” (published two years later). At that time begins the five-year period in which Donald Winnicott (English pediatrician, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst) supervises with Klein.
In 1937 “Love, Hate and Reparation” by Melanie Klein and Joan Riviere was published. At that time, Michel, his first grandchild, was born, son of Eric and his wife Judy (Diana was born in 1942). Eric changes his last name to Clyne.
The prewar intensified the difficulties of continental analysts and increased the exodus, which began in 1933 after the Reichstag fire and was directed mainly towards England. The British Society and E Jones in particular deal intensively with the situation of continental analysts; that in 1938 they constituted a third of the Society.
On March 11, 1938, Germany invades Austria, and on June 6, Freud arrives in London. Klein sends him a welcome letter in which he expresses his desire to see him, to which Freud responds with a brief note of thanks, stating that he hopes to see him in the near future. This meeting never takes place. On September 3, 1939, war was declared and twenty days later Freud died. Klein was already in Cambridge with Susan Isaacs (British pedagogue, psychologist and psychoanalyst) and the following year he settled in Pitlochry, where the analysis of “Richard” took place in 1941.
During this period Jones retired to the field and E. Glover took first place in the British Society. In September 1941 Klein returned to London. To the controversies in relation to points of the theory were added discussions in relation to the conditions of formation and the political management of the Society.
At the annual meeting on July 29, 1942, it was agreed to hold a monthly meeting dedicated to the discussion of scientific differences and a commission was formed to put together the program: Glover, Brierly and J. Strachey.
The meetings begin in October of that year and extend over two years, they are known as the Controversies.
Klein presents his last contribution to the Controversies on March 1, 1944: “The emotional life and the development of the ego in the baby with express reference to the depressive position” (“The Freud-Klein controversies 1941-1945”, edited in English in 1991 by The New Library of Psychoanalysis and in Spanish in 2003 by Editorial Síntesis, in Spain). At that time Glover has already resigned and shortly after Melitta moves to the USA, where she dedicates herself to treating criminals and drug addicts. She would not see her mother again until the 16th International Psychoanalytic Congress, in Zurich, 1949. On that occasion they did not talk about her; in fact, they never reconcile, although there are several indications of the deep pain this causes Klein.
This Congress is extremely important; The weight of North American analysts is notable in it, to the point that Jones is replaced as president of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) by psychiatrist Leo Bartemeier, after 17 years of holding the presidency. Klein sees this as a triumph of Anna-Freudism, although in the congress there are also Latin Americans who had gone to London to train. He meets Jacques Lacan, whose theories do not interest him, but he does support him for the dissemination of his ideas in France. They agreed that he would translate “Children's Psychoanalysis” into French, which ultimately did not materialize and Klein's work appeared in the PUF editions in 1959, a collection directed by Daniel Lagache.
A special issue of the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis dedicated to Klein's 70th birthday is published.
On February 1, 1955, the Melanie Klein Association was founded: “…an association that has been formed to defend my work in the future” (Letter to Paula Heimann). P. Heimann resigned from the Melanie Klein Association at the end of November of that year, after Klein herself requested it. They distance themselves as a result of Klein's theories on primary envy.
This last decade was extremely difficult for Klein because of the strength of his opponents. The following year DW Winnicott was elected president of the British Psychoanalytic Society. In 1957 “Envy and Gratitude” was published.
Death
E. Jones died in 1958, a few months after publishing the last volume of his work “Life and Work of Sigmund Freud”. Klein is very distressed and reduces her activities, as she is also suffering from progressive osteoarthritis. She later developed anemia and finally colon cancer was detected. She underwent surgery in early September 1960, but she suffered complications and eventually died on September 22, 1960.
Source: Wikipedia