Melanie Klein

Background

Melanie Klein, born in Vienna in 1882, was an influential woman psychoanalyst whose work            has had a lasting impression on the field today. By the time of her death of cancer in 1960, she had become a well-known figure in the world of psychology for her impact on developmental psychology. Though she originally had aspired to attend medical school, economic difficulties experienced by her family held her back. At the age of 21, she married for the first time and began a family which would later amount to three children. In 1910 she moved with her family to Budapest, having suffered from depression caused by a less than perfect relationship with her mother. While in Budapest she began studying psychoanalysis with Sandor Ferenczi, who encouraged her to attempt to psychoanalyze her own three children. Klein had to develop her own technique for this, because up until this point no one else had yet attempted to analyze children. The techniques that she created for this purpose are still used today, and much credit should be given to Klein as both a successful woman thinker as well a psychologist.

Melanie Klein developed a form of psychoanalysis called object relations theory, which states that the relationship between mothers and infants is the center of personality development. She developed a “play technique”, in which a child’s playful activities can be taken as symbols of unconscious thoughts and desires. In her technique, play activities are viewed and interpreted in ways which mirror the dream and free association interpretations that are used in the analysis of adults. Klein is thus credited for being the first psychologist to recognize that play is a meaningful activity for children, and this finding directly lead to the development of play therapy. She would spend the rest of her life developing such theories, and creating an entirely new school of psychoanalytic thought. She personally trained many of the first people who embraced her ideas and the concept of the “play technique”. Interestingly enough, Klein was the first psychoanalyst to diverge from Freud’s idea of psychological development while remaining a part of the psychoanalytic movement. Her work on the relationships between mourning and primitive defense mechanisms lead to her coming up with two fundamental developmental stages: the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive position. In direct conflict with the stages of development as described by Freud, Klein’s theories were subject to much debate. In the end, it was agreed that two schools of psychoanalytic thought would now be taught: Freudianism and Kleinianism.

Psychology of Women

Late in Klein’s life she experienced a falling out with one of her children, daughter Melitta. Her final studies and work included such themes of gratitude, envy, and reparation of the mother-infant relationship, and seem to reflect her search for answers to issues in her own life. Having experienced life as both a daughter and a mother, she was inspired to continue to develop her ideas further. Klein’s belief and emphasis on the role of the mother-child experience in an infant’s life has continued to have major influence on modern psychology today. In relation to the psychology of women, Klein’s research stressed the importance of the child’s relationship with his/her mother in reducing anxieties, depression, and fear in children.

http://www2.webster.edu/~woolflm/klein.html

http://www.apadivisions.org/division-35/about/heritage/melanie-klein-biography.aspx.

http://www.feministvoices.com/melanie-klein/