Melanie Klein
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i MELANIE KLEIN Melanie Klein: The Basics provides an accessible and concise introduction to the life and work of Melanie Klein, whose discoveries advanced those of Freud and other analysts, deepening our insight into the unconscious domain of psychology in human beings. Klein began her work by devel- oping a method of psychoanalysis for children, who suffer from anxiety and other, often unrecognised, conflicts, which enabled understanding of those crucial early steps in the development of human mind and iden- tity. Although she initiated one strand of clinical and theoretical devel- opments, many of her discoveries are well-regarded by other schools of psychoanalysis. The book contains four parts, as well as further reading suggestions and a helpful glossary of key terms. Part I introduces Melanie Klein in the context of her life, her early interest in psychoanalysis and her first discoveries; Part II takes up the development of her technique of child analysis and discusses the ways in which her insights and conclusions in this area influenced the technique of adult analysis and the more general understanding of the human mind; Part III focuses on further scientific and clinical developments in psychoanalytic technique – especially those referring to the understanding and treatment of serious emotional dis- turbance, e.g. psychosis or affective disorders; Part IV focuses on con- temporary developments in Kleinian and post-Kleinian psychoanalysis, considering clinical, cultural, and socio- political applications. Each chapter poses a basic question at the outset, provides an account of how Klein faced this question and worked with it to develop her ideas, and ends with a follow up question or issue to be addressed in the subsequent chapter. This book will greatly appeal to readers from any field seeking a clear and concise introduction to Melanie Klein. It will also interest researchers and professionals working within the field of psychoanalysis seeking a suc- cinct overview of Melanie Klein’s contribution. ii R. D. Hinshelwood is a British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who has always had a part-time commitment to public service (NHS and universi- ties) and to teaching psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. He has written on Kleinian psychoanalysis and on the application of psychoanalysis to social science and politics. He has taken an interest in and published on the problems of making evidenced comparisons between different schools of psychoanalysis. Tomasz Fortuna trained as a psychoanalyst at the Institute of Psycho- analysis in London. He is a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, the Hanna Segal Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies and the scientific committees of both organisations. He has worked as a psych- iatrist for the NHS for over 12 years and currently works at the Portman Clinic, for Newham Adolescent Mental Health Team, and is in private psychoanalytic practice. His professional interests include the relation- ship between psychoanalysis and the arts and the understanding of severe emotional disturbance. He is a guest editor of Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication. iii THE BASICS For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/ The- Basics/ book- series/ B ACTING (SECOND EDITION) JAPAN BELLA MERLIN CHRISTOPHER P. HOOD ANIMAL ETHICS LANGUAGE (SECOND EDITION) TONY MILLIGAN R. L. TRASK ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION MEN AND MASCULINITIY JAMES S. BIELO NIGEL EDLEY ARCHAEOLOGY (SECOND EDITION) NARRATIVE CLIVE GAMBLE BRONWEN THOMAS THE BIBLE AND LITERATURE POETRY (THIRD EDITION) NORMAN W. JONES JEFFREY WAINWRIGHT BRITISH POLITICS THE QUR’AN (SECOND EDITION) BILL JONES MASSIMO CAMPANINI CAPITALISM RESEARCH METHODS DAVID COATES NIGEL EDLEY CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY SEMIOTICS MURRAY RAE DANIEL CHANDLER DISCOURSE SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS AND ANGELA GODDARD AND NEIL CAREY DISABILITY (SECOND EDITION) JANICE WEARMOUTH FINANCE (THIRD EDITION) ERIK BANKS SPORT MANAGEMENT ROBERT WILSON AND MARK PIEKARZ FOLKLORE SIMON J. BRONNER TRANSLATION JULIANE HOUSE FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY SANDIE TAYLOR iv v MELANIE KLEIN THE BASICS R. D. Hinshelwood and Tomasz Fortuna vi First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 R. D. Hinshelwood and Tomasz Fortuna The right of R. D. Hinshelwood and Tomasz Fortuna to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978- 1- 138- 66704- 4 (hbk) ISBN: 978- 1- 138- 66705- 1 (pbk) ISBN: 978- 1- 315- 61912- 5 (ebk) Typeset in Times by Out of House Publishing vii To our wives, who have had to support our work and endure our quirks viii ix CONTENTS Acknowledgements xi Introduction 1 PART I NEW METHOD, NEW FACTS 7 1 Who was she? 9 2 Where did she start? 12 3 Establishing the fundamentals of psychoanalysis 17 4 What is psychic reality? 21 5 An insight into children? 25 6 New discoveries, who says? 31 Conclusions to Part I 34 PART II THE EARLIEST DEVELOPMENT – STARTING AT BIRTH 37 7 Earlier mechanisms – In and out 41 8 Experiences and phantasies 47 x x CONTENTS 9 Who are you? – Ego boundary 52 10 Depressed? 60 11 Repairing and caring 66 Conclusions to Part II 74 PART III HOW CRAZY CAN YOU GET? 79 12 Splitting of the ego – What destabilises the mind? 83 13 Annihilation – Who’s afraid of going to pieces? 96 14 Paranoid- schizoid position – Cracking up 101 15 Projective identification – He’s not all there 106 16 The worst of all vices – Envy 115 17 Psychotic reality? 125 Conclusions to Part III 130 PART IV BEYOND BASICS – TRUTH 133 18 Pathological organisations – Who’s in the mafia? 135 19 Containment 143 20 Thoughts find a thinker 151 21 How does it all apply? 157 Conclusions to Part IV 165 Glossary 168 Note 179 References 180 Index 188 xi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The understanding of these ideas has been thoroughly attained from personal experience through both our own analyses and our clinical work. We therefore want to acknowledge the invalu- able help of our analysts – Stanley Leigh and David Bell – who gave us not only the help we depend on now for living our lives, but showed us all the examples we ever needed through point- ing to our own psychodynamics. The learning process that has enabled us to write this book with some authority depended also on the supervisors we have had during our training and sub- sequently – Isabel Menzies, Sydney Klein, Esther Bick, Betty Joseph, Irma Brenman Pick, Priscilla Roth, and John Steiner. We must also thank the publishers, and Susannah Frearson our editor in particular for birthing this book through the usual (and unusual) hurdles that a manuscript needs to pass on its journey into the hands of the readers. And of course there are our readers who have existed, long before you read this book, as internal objects who have shown the greatest interest in our work, and in these topics which are of the greatest interest to us. newgenprepdfxii xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Finally, as Isaac Newton said, we stand on the shoulders of giants. And so we should express our great debt to Melanie Klein herself who has inspired generations of analysts, of whom we are just two. We hope that we are able to do some justice to the inspiring and fertilising work that she started. 1 INTRODUCTION To introduce the basics of Melanie Klein’s thought it makes sense to start at the beginning! Klein was a renowned psy- choanalyst who in her original way developed Freud’s work by becoming one of the first analysts to work with children and to lay the foundations for understanding severe mental disturbance. But who are we then, us, psychoanalysts? A little mysterious, a bit scary? Too interested in what lies beyond the limits of con- sciousness? Well maybe… But what guides us is the idea that there is a lot we humans do not know about our own minds, even though we have each got one. Although in this book we largely focus on the work of Melanie Klein, we hope that you will see how we psychoanalysts think about our profession these days. In our culture psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts have been por- trayed in humorous terms. Partly to make sense of what it really is, and partly to put aside the sometimes uncanny ‘mystery’ surrounding psychoanalysis. Woody Allen, an American film director, having him- self had an analysis, made a number of references to it in his work. In 2 2 INTRODUCTION one of his films, Annie Hall (1977), the main character describing his analysis gives his analyst an ultimatum. He says unless he sees pro- gress within a year he will go to Lourdes. On another occasion, Allen compared psychoanalysis to piano lessons, stating jokingly that after some years of not seeing any change, one suddenly notices one can play the piano. A person entering into psychoanalysis hopes for quick results and a ‘miracle’, represented as a pilgrimage to ‘Lourdes’; but they must realise that it is a gradual process to get to know oneself and one’s ways of coping with life, in the presence of a psychoanalyst.