Complicating Disorder: The Play of Interpretation and Resistance in Melanie Klein’s Narrative of a Child Analysis
Hilary Clark, University of Saskatchewan, What is disorder? The prefix “dis-” conducts research in psychoanalysis and the indicates that disorder is the reversal of, or, literature of depression and trauma. She has more strongly, negation or absence of, order, been working on a SSHRC-funded project on when order is understood as the regular and issues of interpretation and symbolization in harmonious functioning of things (OED). The British child psychoanalysis. Recent work order/disorder binary—like other binaries includes an edited volume, Depression and such as mind/body and reason/passion—has Narrative: Telling the Dark, and a chapter on structured thinking, at least in the West, about shame, death, and masks in J. Kauffman, disease and “madness,” seeing them as ed., The Shame of Death, Grief, and Trauma. dangerous and anarchic, as the absence of health and sanity. Feminist critique has Abstract deconstructed such binaries foundational to This essay explores the challenge to the Western medical and psychiatric discourses order/disorder binary offered by the dynamics in order to expose their operation in of the psychoanalytic session, specifically reinforcing normative therapeutic practices one of Melanie Klein’s child analyses. It and perpetuating the power relations—the argues that the perception of psychoanalysis systemic inequalities of gender, sexuality, as normalizing is considerably complicated by race, and class—that characterize these the play of interpretation and resistance practices. This article investigates the between analyst and child. meaning of disorder—the vicissitudes of the order/disorder binary—in the context of Résumé psychoanalysis as a practice. The Freudian Cet essai explore le concept binaire de model of psychosexual development has normal/trouble offert par la dynamique de la been attacked, of course, from a gendered session psychanalytique, plus particulièrement perspective as pathologizing non-masculine l’une des analyses sur l’enfant de Melanie and non-hetero sexualities. As well, one line Klein. Il argumente que la perception de of critique regarding psychoanalysis as a normalisation de la psychanalyse s’avère therapeutic practice has seen it as considérablement compliquée par le jeu normalizing: its interpretation of individual d’interprétation entre analyste et enfant. neurotic and hysterical symptoms as manifestations of disorder reduces the potential meanings of these “texts” to those sanctioned by the psychoanalytic institution and a society intolerant of mental difference, all in the interests of returning the patient to docile health or adaptation. While such a critique has been necessary in feminism’s work of analyzing patriarchal structures, I do think that it tends to overlook the complexity of psychoanalysis as a practice and the many directions it has taken in its evolution up to the present time. However, my purpose in this essay is not to defend psychoanalysis but rather to explore
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what happens to the meaning of disorder, Oedipal interpretations—all take part in the and indeed to the order/disorder binary itself, analysis, an “uncanny encounter” (Kristeva in the analytic situation. I will argue that the 2001, 144) that can never be controlled perception of psychoanalysis as a normal- entirely. Jacqueline Rose argues that izing and disciplinary practice is considerably analysis “makes of the analyst a fool and a complicated by the emotional dynamics of an fantast” (1993, 169‒70); to explore what actual analysis, with its interplay of transfer- happens to the meaning of disorder, and ence and counter-transference—of interpret- indeed to the order/disorder binary itself in the ation, resistance, and counter-resistance— relationship between analyst and analysand, I between analysand (patient) and analyst. will argue that the perception of psychoanalysis It is true, of course, that analysis— as a normalizing and disciplinary practice is especially child analysis—is grounded in a considerably complicated by the emotional structure of authority; it is an unequal dynamics of an actual analysis. relationship, ensuring that the analyst, as a Before turning to Klein’s Narrative, I will well-trained professional, is presumed to be look briefly at some meanings of interpret- the one who knows what is “normal” and what ation, resistance, transference, and counter- is not. In this relationship, the analyst is the transference, and at the interplay of these one who interprets the patient’s unconscious processes in the analytic situation. Freud’s phantasies, who “reads” the symptoms for thinking about these concepts developed their latent meanings. And the analyst is the over his years of clinical experience, and as one who conveys this knowledge to the psychoanalytic practice in general has evolved patient and helps her or him emerge from and changed, as in Klein’s development of illness. Drawing upon Melanie Klein’s the play technique and child analysis, so have Narrative of a Child Analysis (1961), an the meanings of these concepts. However, the account of Klein’s analysis in 1941 of understanding of interpretation as the process Richard, a ten-year-old boy, I will suggest, of apprehending and making explicit latent however, that in the moment-by-moment meanings, of “render[ing] the unconscious unfolding of analysis as she practised it, the conscious,” has remained much the same question of who knows and who doesn’t (Segal 2008, 123). In his essays on psycho- (want to) know, who interprets and who analytic technique, Freud addresses the resists is not always easily answered. Klein’s transferential relation-ship that develops Narrative is a very detailed and lengthy between analyst and patient. The aim of reconstruction of a child analysis based on analysis is therapeutic insight: put simply, the the extensive notes she made after sessions; analyst interprets the unconscious meanings it allows one to follow a child’s analysis, with of the patient’s associations or play and its interplay of resistance and interpretation communicates these insights. Ideally, the on both sides, over the course of many patient becomes conscious of repressed sessions. By drawing on examples from the phantasies and desires, and of the un- case, I will focus on how the child, Richard, conscious defences by which she or he has responds to and often resists Mrs. K.’s kept these repressed. Such knowledge graphic Oedipal interpretations of his play emerges in the dynamic interplay, often conflict, and drawings, how Mrs K. responds, and how of the patient’s and analyst’s perspectives. Klein as author frames Richard’s resistance Central to this interplay is the patient’s in her narrative of the analysis, reconstructing transference to the analyst of unconscious it years after the event and not long before love and hatred, which was originally ex- her death. I will suggest that this narrative perienced in relation to the earliest objects, can be read for its moments of disavowal of the parents. For Freud, transferences are “new the patient’s resistance, that is, its own points editions or facsimiles of the tendencies and of counter-resistance. Richard, his analyst phantasies which are aroused and made Mrs K., the author Melanie Klein—and to conscious during the progress of the analysis; these I would add the reader of Narrative, but they have this peculiarity...that they re- responding emotionally to frequently shocking place some earlier person by the person of
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the physician” (1905, 116). This process of 294).They may run resistance by asking her making “facsimiles,” of making the present personal questions or by “distorting” her analyst a copy of a past person and interpretations. They may “act and talk as if transferring the phantasies associated with stupid” (1983, 295) or, on the other hand, that person onto the analyst, is central to the offer their own interpretations, “convinced that therapeutic relationship in which change can they should be psychotherapists or analysts” occur. At the same time, however, inasmuch themselves (297). Joseph sees such patients as it repeats the past, the transference is the as “deeply encroaching,” although she does patient’s means of resistance to insight, not consider here that in their “anti-under- change, and movement into the future; thus, standing” or resistance, patients might them- it is “the most powerful medium of resistance” selves be defending against psychic encroach- to success (Freud 1912a, 101). ment, resisting the trauma of “internaliz[ing] Freud suggests that in seeking ...the analyst’s interpretive function” (Bass insight into the sources of the patient’s 2000, 251). distress, “we [analysts] enter a region in While their clinical experience may lead which the resistance makes itself felt....It is at analysts to feel that, as Adam Phillips puts it, this point, on the evidence of our experience, “the only ambition that sustains people is the that transference enters on the scene” ambition to repeat the past” (Freud 2002, xxiv) (1912a, 103). Giving up one’s infantile and to resist understanding, analysts are phantasies is resisted, not surprisingly. As people, too, and they are not exempt from being Freud puts it, “The resistance accompanies caught up in this process of unconscious the treatment step by step....[E]very act of the repetition, that is, the counter-transference. As it has developed, psychoanalysis has increasingly person under treatment...represents a recognized the counter-transference, which compromise between the forces that are Paula Heimann defines as “the analyst’s striving towards recovery and the opposing emotional response to his patient within the ones” (1912a, 103). Resistance, understood analytic situation” (Heimann 1989, 74)—as as a force opposing recovery, is what makes illustrated in Joseph’s sense of some patients analysis “interminable”; in Freud’s view near as “deeply encroaching.” Such a response, the end of his life, the resistance put up by Heimann says, can be used as “an instrument the transference is evidence of “a of research into the patient’s unconscious” force...which is absolutely resolved to hold on (1989, 74). No longer neutral, no longer what to illness and suffering” (1937, 242) and to Freud called the “opaque” analyst, “a mirror keep the patient ignorant of happier ...show[ing patients] nothing but what is alternatives. Freud’s earlier view was that shown to him” (Freud 1912b, 118), the “[t]he task of the treatment lies in combating analyst is a participant in the emotional these resistances” (1910, 7); analysis involves a dynamics of the analysis. While the counter- war between the powers of order and transference should be controlled, not freely disorder, knowledge and ignorance. Yet in expressed, for the analyst it is “a most valuable 1937 he was pessimistic, or at least a little means of checking whether he has under- more pragmatic, about the actual power of stood or failed to understand his patient” analysis to win this war and effect a cure, (Heimann 1989, 75). As the analyst’s questioning whether “it [is] possible by means emotional reaction to the patient, the counter- of analysis to attain to a level of absolute transference complicates the picture of psychical normality” (1937, 219‒20). analysis as a cure carried out by a neutral Analysts after Freud have shared his interpreter who can penetrate to the un- frustration with the wily ways by which conscious meanings of a non-enlightened patients resist insight. As British analyst Betty patient. Resistance accompanies knowledge Joseph puts it, certain patients are in the grip for both participants in the analytic encounter. of a “destructive anti-understanding” (1983, “Primary disavowal,” the inertia that clings to 291): envious of the analyst’s knowledge, wish or illusion over reality, “is an always they are ready to “beat down and devalue active force on both sides of the couch” (Bass what the analyst has...shown them” (1983,
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2000, 271); an awareness of this process is In the playroom, the child patient is often crucial if psychoanalysis is to know itself. more transparent than the adult; anxiety and Klein did not share Heimann’s view resistance can be much more evident, as the that the counter-transference is “one of the younger child screams, breaks toys, wets most important tools” in the analyst’s work herself, hides, or runs to mother in the waiting (Heimann 1989, 74), although she does area. These are all forms of negative transfer- acknowledge in an unpublished source that in ence, in Klein’s view—points at which the child their often hostile and “non‒-co-operative” sees the analyst as a fearful bad mother, attitudes, in their disorderly conduct, schizo- points at which she must be quick to phrenic patients can arouse “counter-transfer- intervene with an interpretation. According to ence feelings” in the analyst—a reaction, she Juliet Mitchell, Klein’s clinical premise is that adds drily, that is “inclined to be a negative whatever is causing the anxiety “can be one” (quoted in Hinshelwood 2008, 111‒12). understood and put into words in an interpret- On the whole, while her theories diverged ation which can bring clarity and relief” (Klein from Freud’s, in her writings on clinical 1986, 21). Timely interpretation can be practice Klein is like Freud in that both tend to effective “even when it does not appear to emphasize the authority and knowledge of have been taken in consciously” (Klein 1932, the analyst as the one who interprets, not the 8). The analyst, then, would appear to be the one who is interpreted. For Klein, the analyst one who knows, who clarifies disorder and discerns the unconscious meanings of the relieves intense anxiety. Yet Donald Meltzer child’s symbolic play and conveys these claims that, in her actual practice, Klein meanings to the child. “Deep” interpretations interpreted “unashamedly in the dark” (Meltzer (ones that expose the most anxiety-provoking 1998, 167), trying out ideas and discarding sadistic phantasies) are interventions aimed them. And in practice, the analyst’s authority at reducing the child’s anxiety and freeing him may be challenged constantly, even by the or her from inhibitions in play and speech smallest child. (Klein 1932). She worked on the assumption In her 1940 analysis of Richard, that, as long as they are addressed in simple, recounted twenty years later in Narrative of a non-technical language, children can under- Child Analysis, Klein was working with these stand Oedipal interpretations of their play as assumptions about the analyst’s interpretive doing things with breasts and penises; for role and the inevitable interplay of interpret- example, they can understand that bumping ation and resistance, assumptions she had toy carriages together symbolizes parents held, more or less, since the beginning of her “bump[ing] their ‘thingummies’...together” practice. However, just before this time, she (1932, 17). They can understand these things published her major essay “Mourning and its because they are from birth sexual and Relation to Manic-Depressive States” (Klein aggressive beings: the vision of the asexual, 1998). In the narrative, Mrs K. as well as innocent child, for Klein as for Freud, is a Richard and his mother have moved away myth or fairy tale. Some analysts objected from London during the war, and the sessions that such graphic sexual interpretations would take place in a rented playroom in their sharply increase a child’s anxiety. However, temporary location. Mrs K.’s analysis of Klein claims in The Psycho-Analysis of Richard takes into account his mourning for Children that such interpretations actually his lost home and way of life, and interprets alleviate children’s anxiety, as demonstrated his defences against this painful emotional when, after an interpretation, they return to state. The analysis works on the assumption their play, their symbolic theatre of love and that, in Hanna Segal’s words, “symbol hate, life and death, with greater relish and formation is the outcome of a loss” (Segal creativity. 2008, 76). From the beginning of her practice In child analysis as in adult, the with children, Klein ensured that each child transference resists “the psycho-analytic had access to aids to symbol formation: “little procedure...as it begins to open up roads into toys” (small wooden male and female figures, the patient’s unconscious” (Klein 1997a, 48). animals, cars, trains), paper and pencils for
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drawing, plus a sink and running water (Klein night terrors or fear of other children) to 1932, 32‒33). But Richard, being ten, is not diminish. Klein’s clinical method has been de- initially interested in these little toys Mrs. K. scribed as involving “continual interpretation...[a] has to offer; rather, he is anxiously following constant working over and revaluation of data” the war, bringing a set of model battleships to (Segal and Meltzer 1963, 512)—a process of the sessions and drawing U-boats and “sorting things out and throwing things away, bombers. Mrs K. interprets his battleship play and turning up new ideas,” a “serial approx- and his drawings as symbolizing Oedipal imation” (Meltzer 1998, 167‒69) that proceeds conflicts. She also interprets Richard’s talk in the dark. and questions about the war, his frequent Let us turn to a few examples in recourse to a map of Europe on the wall, the Narrative of Klein’s method of “deep” interpret- personal questions he put to her about her ation and Richard’s responses. life and her past, and even his fidgety rituals In the third session, Richard begins such as turning the electric fire on and off and talking about developments in the war: checking the clock. Everything the boy says and does is interpretable in Oedipal terms, He soon turned to the map and expressed his especially his moments of anxiety and fears about the British battleships being blockaded resistance to interpretation. While Mrs. K. in the Mediterranean if Gibraltar were taken by the acknowledges and refers to Richard’s fears of Germans. They could not get through Suez. He Hitler and German bombs, she sees his also spoke of injured soldiers and showed some depression as arising not so much from the anxiety about their fate. He wondered how the war as from the Oedipal anxieties that these British troops could be rescued from Greece. What conscious fears have “stirred up” (1961, 19). would Hitler do to the Greeks; would he enslave Or, as Lyndsey Stonebridge writes, for Klein them? Looking at the map, he said with concern the war will not stay in the external world: it that Portugal was a very small country compared “fails to remain objective and becomes with big Germany, and would be overcome by entangled with early anxiety and guilt” (1998, Hitler. 199). To put it more bluntly, in every case, “the child’s worries signif[y] something else” Mrs K. interpreted that he also worried (Hinshelwood 1994, 38), and Richard will unconsciously about what might happen to Daddy overcome his fears only when his worries, when he put his genital into Mummy. Daddy might questions, and dreams about the war and not be able to get out of Mummy’s inside and Hitler are interpreted in terms of the Oedipal would be caught there, like the ships in the war within. Mediterranean…. [The following recalls material Narrative of a Child Analysis gives an from the two earlier sessions.] He was also afraid excellent illustration of Klein’s analytic method, that Mummy would be hurt by the tramp- summarized by the sequence “anxiety- Daddy....His dog Bobby stood for himself wanting interpretation-response” (Hinshel-wood 1994, to take his father’s place with Mummy...and 38). The child plays and produces symbolic whenever he felt jealous and angry, he hated and material for interpretation; the analyst attacked Daddy in his thoughts.... presents an interpretation as soon as the child shows, by an evident surge in anxiety, Richard smiled agreement at Mrs K.’s saying that that a dangerous phantasy is close to the dog stood for himself, but disagreed consciousness; the child responds to this emphatically with the other part of the interpretation in words or further play; the interpretation, because he would never do such a analyst interprets this response; and so on, in thing (1961, 27‒28). a sequence that is only limited by the clock— the end of the session. The sequence is As might be expected, the child taken up again the next day and the next—in defends himself stoutly against the analyst’s Richard’s case for 93 sessions, but usually suggestion that he wants to attack his “tramp- for even longer—as long as it takes for the Daddy” and be a husband to his Mummy. child’s symptoms and distress (for instance, From the analyst’s point of view, this
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resistance springs from his guilt and anxiety technique and not be surprised at the content about his own aggression, anxiety that will of her interpretations. Another reader might eventually be moderated and contained by judge Mrs K. to be a “fool and fantast” (Rose) further interpretations, leading to a better for interpreting the boy’s upset over re- “adjustment outside the analysis” and an settlement and his war anxieties—at a time “improve[ed]...sense of reality” (Meltzer 1998, when Britain feared invasion by Germany—in 237‒38). these Oedipal terms. Another might be Richard is described by Klein as a squeamish at some of her assertions or hypochondriac. In the fifth session, he horrified by them: how can a therapist talk to sneezes and becomes anxious that he is her child patient about his wanting to have getting sick with a cold. Klein records his sex with her? (The margins of my own copy words: “‘He knows his blows’, meaning to of the book are full of exclamation points and say, ‘He blows his nose’....” (1961, 34). comments such as “Ugh!”) Reading Narrative Taking advantage of his amusement when can indeed seem an “intimate journey to the she points out this “slip of the tongue,” Mrs K. end of the night” (Kristeva 2001, 8), the interprets his anxiety over a cold as involving reader swept up counter-transferentially in fear of “something bad inside him, hence the the murky dynamics of the analysis itself. Yet, blows” (34). Richard’s response to this if Mrs K. seems quite foolish or even mad at punning interpretation is to look upside-down points, some might see her interpretive at the map of Europe; he comments that the excesses as the beginning of insight. Kristeva new, “funny” shape Europe has from this argues, following in the tradition of the perspective is “‘not proper’...[it is] ‘muddled Romantics, Rimbaud, and Artaud, that and mixed up’” (34). Mrs K. takes a leap: his “[m]adness must not be ignored or brushed real meaning is his parents “‘muddled and aside, but spoken, written, and thought”; from mixed up’ in sexual intercourse....This was her perspective as a psychoanalyst, she sees what he meant by ‘not proper’, ‘funny’” “madness...[as] quietly lurk[ing] inside (34‒35). Not surprisingly, Richard “show[s] us...encourag[ing] excesses and limitations - anxiety” upon this interpretation and starts but also innovations” (2001, 8). moving around the room, looking at things Richard’s responses to Mrs K.’s and talking about them. Then “Mrs K. interpretations take a number of forms. He interpret[s] that this exploring the room denies the interpretation, or laughs. He gets [stands] for the wish to explore her [Mrs K.’s] up and walks around, turns the fire on and inside” (35)—that is, he is transferring to Mrs off, goes to the tap and drinks. Or he goes K. his desire to explore his mother’s inside. out into the garden: for instance, in response Richard’s response to this interpretation is to to an interpretation that turning the fire off continue exploring the room, hence, for Mrs means “stopping life [killing babies] inside K., confirming her interpretation. Mummy and Mrs K.,” he protests “that he André Green takes a critical view of [cannot] listen to this and he [wants] to go this process of constant interpretation: “[A]n outside” (1961, 291). (Here, however, he analysis conducted solely through interpret- sees only weeds.) For Richard, sometimes no ations of the transference often puts the patient response is best, as when he is silent after an under unbearable pressure. The analysis interpretation or, as Klein notes often, does takes on an aspect of persecution even if not appear to be listening. He does not these interpretations are designed to help the respond, for instance, after listening to Mrs patient understand what is happening within K.’s interpretation of a dream in which he is at him” (Green 1997, 298‒99). We might also a law court before a judge and then kicks ask what effect such interpretations have on some “tumbled-down buildings” with “his the reader, for instance, when Mrs K. tells enormous black shoe”: Mrs K. states that this Richard that he wishes to have sexual dream is really indicating his guilty desire to intercourse with her (and Mummy). Can the attack his parents, “stealing Daddy’s genital reader remain neutral? A Kleinian analyst and also taking Mummy’s breast” (232). A reading the narrative might focus on Mrs K.’s moment later, Richard points to one of his
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drawings, demonstrating another mode of play along. If the analysis is a kind of play resistance that a child (or indeed an adult) itself, tossing out colourful interpretations, if it can use: he can distract the analyst. But Mrs is a game with Oedipal rules, then Richard K. immediately interprets the distraction, so (who is very bright) is soon interpreting the then the boy has to find another way to make symbolic meanings of his own play. In doing her stop: he interrupts her. Breaking into her so, he is anticipating Mrs K.’s interpretations. interpretation of his positive transference— For instance, after arranging his toy battle- that Mrs K. has become a “good Mummy”— ships into allies vs. enemies—hesitating over he tells her he knows how much his mother which side Mrs K. is on, as she speaks pays her (233). This interruption recasts his German—Richard points to the Germans and relationship to Mrs K. as taking place in the says, ‘“This is the bad Mummy with the bad context of a financial transaction between his children’” (270‒71). Again, when he touches real mother and Mrs K., her paid help. the Mummy destroyer with the Richard In addition to silence (no response or destroyer, and Mrs K. tells him this means not listening), distraction, and interruption, having intercourse with his mother, Richard there are other modes of resistance. For points out that five smaller destroyers are his instance, Richard develops a sore throat, babies with Mummy (173). In another sniffles, and tummy ache, which are likely example, when Mrs K. tells him that a psychosomatic symptoms. At times he is drawing portrays his genital inside hers, he given to bursts of aggressive acting-out (he points out four more of his genitals, more stamps on plants in the garden, throws than his father and brother have (177). Thus, furniture around, shouts, and kicks); at times in making his own interpretations, Richard he defaces the text under interpretation (he shifts the text of the analysis—which, scribbles over certain drawings). Verbal however playful, is single-authored—and resistance can involve direct denial: when makes it one that he writes with her. His Richard puts a battleship representing his playing along is just as much a form of father alongside a cruiser representing resistance as direct denial is; however, Klein himself, and Mrs K. interprets that the Daddy seems to take his interpretations as and Richard ships are “put[ting] their genitals confirming those of Mrs K. together,” “Richard strongly object[s]...[saying] At points, interestingly, Richard over- he could not have such desires, he would not turns the rules of the game and insists that like to do such things with his genital at all” certain things are not symbolic. For instance, (286). On another occasion he protests (per- when he draws a little fish close to a bigger haps too much), “‘But I am an innocent child’” fish, Mrs K. suggests that the little fish is a (269). When he does assent to an interpret- “baby...feeding at its mother’s breast and that ation, he may use flattery in order to keep was one reason why he [is] jealous of it” ahead, telling Mrs K. that she is “very clever (260). With the common sense of childhood, to find...out” that a snake in a drawing is Richard tells her “that a fish has not got actually an octopus, their agreed symbol for breasts, it has fins” (260). Sometimes a fish is Daddy (248). Sometimes Richard tries to get just a fish. ahead of his analyst, as when he asks her Of Mrs K.’s counter-transference “appealingly, ‘What are your secrets?’” His during these analytic sessions, Klein does not question does not elicit Mrs K.’s secrets, of say a great deal. In one session near the end, course; she tells him he is curious about what during which Richard is acting up destructively, she and his parents “are doing at night” (272). Mrs K. “[becomes] impatient” with him, “which, At one point he questions her about psycho- being unusual, frighten[s] him very much” (419). analysis itself: “It seemed such a secret to In his week-by-week discussion of the case, him. He would like to get to the ‘heart of it’” Meltzer refers to “the urgency of the counter- (231). He is told that the heart stands for his transference situation, related to the short- parents’ secrets and their genitals. ness of time,” as the end of the analysis is Richard’s most effective mode of always in sight (1998, 229). Given that the resistance to Mrs K.’s interpretations is to end is approaching, sometimes the boy
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needs reassurance, and it would seem the her nourishing interpretations. In observing analyst’s neutrality might shift a bit. In fact, that the boy “usually followed quite closely my Klein does acknowledge that she “had given interpretations,” Klein would seem to be a very direct reassurance which [she] on the countering the acts of resistance that she whole deprecate[s].…My knowledge that he records, her comment indicating what Bass might not, for years to come, have any refers to as “the countertransference fantasy opportunity for analysis...no doubt had an of controlling the patient” (Bass 2000, 233). influence on my counter-transference” (1961, She comments on one session, for instance, 325‒26). However, the counter-transference when Richard is being very negative—saying appears to be, on the whole, a mistake for he did not want to come today, scribbling correction, and Mrs K. is presented as being over his drawings, and shouting (Klein 1961, emotionally rather neutral. This de-emphasis 260)—that he “had to some extent been of the analyst’s responses accords with Klein’s listening”; it “was difficult to know what he had de-emphasis of the counter-transference in her heard or taken in. But he quietened down writings on practice. While she includes notes somewhat” (1961, 260). In another such commenting on each session, she addresses comment, Richard “[does] not disagree” with mostly the theoretical implications of her an interpretation focusing on the genitals of the findings. Further, Klein’s use of the persona “octopus-daddy” in a drawing (138). Does this “Mrs K.” instead of “I” in recounting the mean he agrees? Such comments, emphasizing sessions would appear to be a way of Richard’s usual compliance or evading the neutralizing the counter-transference. possibility of his non-compliance, suggest a Klein wrote Narrative of a Child counter-resistance on Klein’s part, evidently Analysis on the basis of notes she had made still operative years after the analysis. As she after each session with Richard. Like any was working on the narrative in old age (she case narrative, Klein’s Narrative reconstructs died in 1960), she may have been attempting the analytic sessions, arranging, adding, and to lay the case to rest for the last time. deleting. Such a process of reconstruction is Thus, a boy of ten can be for his particularly emphasized in a case narrative, analyst an ongoing source of preoccupation; like Klein’s, written some years after the his remembered acts of resistance provoke sessions providing its material. She emphasizes her continuing interpretations and drive for her later perspective by including comments knowledge and control. Working through and on the implications of each session. For reinterpreting the sessions twenty years later, instance, in a note added to the end of the Klein demonstrates that Richard’s analysis session in which Richard informs Mrs K. that was incomplete: it could have gone on much “a fish has not got breasts,” Klein is evidently longer. She acknowledges that due to the war still interpreting his remark: “In retrospect I am situation, “adequate working-through was not struck by the fact that Richard, who usually possible” (1961, 13). Yet it is not only war or followed quite closely my interpretations of other external factors that prevent “adequate his symbolic presentation of material, at this working-through.” It is in the nature of analysis point stated that a fish has no breasts. I itself to be potentially interminable: as Hugh would now conclude that this was because Haughton puts it, there is a “double commit- his envy of the breast led him to deny that his ment to interpretation and resistance to inter- mother ever had breasts” (262). pretation” (Freud 2003, ix), a commitment to At the time she was writing Narrative, cure and a fascination with that which resists Klein was developing her theory of envy, cure. Both resistance and counter-resistance specifically the idea of the infant’s envy of the are inevitable in analysis, and “neutrality is breast and desire to spoil it; in 1957 she never a once-and-for-all achievement” (Bass published the essay “Envy and Gratitude” 2000, 271). Such factors complicate a reading (1997b). In the above passage, she interprets of analysis as solely enforcing norms and Richard’s resistance as based on envy not judging difference as disorder. only of his mother’s breast, but also, through Case narratives such as Klein’s show the transference, of his analyst’s good milk— analysis to involve the drive to interpret another
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person to the depths so as to bring about a ———. ”Recommendations to Physicians normalizing cure. Yet these narratives also Practising Psycho-Analysis,” Standard Edition. record a process of poetic-symbolic play, a 12 (1912b): 109‒20. mutual communication from “unconscious to unconscious” (Bollas 2007, 87), which, pro- ———. “Analysis Terminable and Interminable,” ceeding in intuitive, associative leaps, shifts Standard Edition. 23 (1937): 209‒54. the ground of interpretation and authority from moment to moment. Klein saw the hours ———. Wild Analysis. A. Phillips, ed., A. Bance, of play analysis as filled with “colour, life, and trans. London: Penguin, 2002. complexity” (1932, 34). While I do not think that psychoanalysis in its focus on the un- ———. The Uncanny. H. Haughton, ed., D. conscious “erases the boundary between the McLintock, trans. London: Penguin, 2003. ‘normal’ and the ‘pathological,’” as Kristeva asserts (2001, 8), its practice does complicate Green, A. On Private Madness. London: this boundary and the associated dichotomy Karnac, 1997. of order and disorder. In Klein’s case, I agree with Deborah Britzman’s paradoxical assess- Heimann, P. “On Counter-Transference,” About ment that “what Klein’s change signified was Children and Children-No-Longer: Collected a radical reconsideration of normality and Papers 1942‒80, M. Tonnesmann, ed. knowledge through the making of psycho- London: Tavistock/Routledge, 1989, pp. 73‒79. analytic knowledge” (Britzman 2003, 58). Klein’s Narrative shows that in analysis—and in reading Hinshelwood, R. D. Clinical Klein: From Theory analysis—the meaning of disorder could not to Practice. New York: Basic Books, 1994. be more ambiguous. ———. “Melanie Klein and Countertransfer- References ence: A Note on Some Archival Material,” Bass, A. Difference and Disavowal: The Trauma Psychoanalysis and History. 10.1 (2008): of Eros. Stanford, CA: Stanford University 95‒113. Press, 2000. Joseph, B. “On Understanding and Not Bollas, C. The Freudian Moment. London: Understanding: Some Technical Issues,” Karnac, 2007. International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 64 (1983): 291‒98. Britzman, D. P. After-Education: Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, and Psychoanalytic Histories Klein, M. The Psycho-Analysis of Children of Learning. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2003. (1932), A. Strachey, trans. London: Vintage, 1997. Freud, S. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, J. ———. “Mourning and Its Relation to Manic- Strachey, trans., 24 volumes. London: Hogarth Depressive States,” Love, Guilt and Reparation Press, 1966‒1974. and Other Works 1921‒1945 (1937). London: Vintage, 1998, pp. 344‒69. ———. “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria,” Standard Edition. 7 (1905): 1‒122. ———. “Envy and Gratitude,” Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946‒1963 ———. “’Wild’ Psycho-Analysis,” Standard (1957). London: Vintage, 1997, pp. 176‒235. Edition. 11 (1910): 219‒28. ———. “The Origins of Transference,” Envy ———. “The Dynamics of Transference,” and Gratitude and Other Works 1946‒1963 Standard Edition. 12 (1912a): 97‒108. (1952). London: Vintage, 1997, pp. 48‒56.
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———. Narrative of a Child Analysis. New and the Return to Melanie Klein. Oxford: York: Free Press, 1961. Blackwell, 1993, pp. 137‒90.
———. The Selected Melanie Klein, J. Segal, H. Introduction to the Work of Melanie Mitchell, ed. London: Penguin, 1986. Klein. London: Karnac, 2008.
Kristeva, J. Melanie Klein. R. Guberman, trans. ——— and D. Meltzer. “Review of Narrative New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. of a Child Analysis by Melanie Klein,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 44 Meltzer, D. The Kleinian Development. London: (1963): 507‒13. Karnac, 1998. Stonebridge, L. “Anxiety in Klein: The Missing Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed.
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