Melanie Klein

Later, he divorced his first wife, he then met and fell deeply in love with Libussa Deutsch. They were soon married. At marriage he was in his forty's and she was only twenty-five. They remained devoted to each other and had four children together. Of the four, Melanie was the youngest. Dr. Reizes was not very successful as a doctor, so Libussa opened a shop of exotic plants and animals. They got by without much money. When Melanie was five, Dr. Reizes inherited some money. This extra money enabled him to buy a dental practice. He was much more successful at this kind of business. Melanie did not have a close relationship with her father. By the time she was a child he was well more than fifty and did not have much patience with her. He also frequently expressed favoritism for his oldest daughter, Emily. Dr. Reizes died when Melanie was only eighteen (Segal, 1979).

Melanie was much closer to her mother. Her memories of her mother were, how much younger she was compared to her father, her warm-heart, and her courageousness. She spent the last few years of her life in Melanie's home. She died in 1914. Melanie was very moved by the way that her mother viewed and approached death. Melanie remembers her childhood as mostly happy (Grosskurth, 1986).

Melanie Klein herself, was not very religious, but she was very aware of her Jewish roots. She liked some of the Jewish traditions and had little respect for those who denied their Jewishness (Segal, 1979).

Melanie had three older siblings. Melanie's oldest sister, Emily was six years older than she. Emmanuel, the only brother was five years older and Sidonie was four years older. The two older siblings stuck together and often picked on and teased Melanie. Sidonie stood up for Melanie. Sidonie and Emmanuel both died at young ages. These deaths affected Melanie's life. Before Sidonie died, she stated to Melanie that she wanted to teach her everything that she knew. Sidonie taught Melanie how to read and write. Sidonie was a sickly child and died at the young age of nine (Grosskurth, 1986).

Melanie's brother Emmanuel was very talented. He played the piano and wrote poetry. Melanie and Emmanuel became closer with age. When Melanie was fourteen, she decided that she wanted to go to the University and study medicine. Greek and Latin were needed to pass the entrance exam and Emmanuel tutored her. As Melanie grew a little older, Emmanuel introduced her to his circle of friends. Out of those friends, Melanie met her husband to be. Emmanuel soon became ill with a rheumatic heart condition. He once wrote to Melanie wishing that fate would give her as many happy years as the days it was going to deprive him of. Emmanuel died in his twenties while she was abroad. The deaths of her two siblings contributed to her streak of depression. Her depression was a main factor of her personality. On the other hand, her sibling's deaths stimulated her intellectual interests and gave her a feeling of having a duty to seek development and achievement (Grosskurth, 1986).

Melanie was dazzled by Emmanuel's friend, Arthur Stephen Klein. His intellect and charm won her over. They were engaged by the time Melanie was nineteen and the engagement interfered with her plans to study medicine. She spent the next two years studying at Vienna University. She thought that if she had a medical degree people would listen to her views and treat her with more respect. Arthur Stephen Klein was an engineer and had to travel to various factories and could not stay with her in Vienna. Melanie and Arthur Stephen Klein married two years into their engagement. For several years she traveled with her husband for his job, to several small towns. She missed the intellectual stimulation that she once had in Vienna. The marriage from the beginning was full of problems. Melanie stated that her true happiness was with the birth of her children. Melitta was born in 1904, Hans in 1907, and Eric in 1914 (Segal, 1979).

Work

In 1920, at a psychoanalysis congress Melanie Klein met Karl Abraham she was greatly impressed with him. He spoke encouragingly of her work in child analysis which prompted her in 1921 to move to Berlin. There, she established a psycho analytical practice with adults and children. She persuaded Abraham to take her on as a patient, after much thought he agreed. But the analysis was stopped by his abrupt death fourteen months later. After his death she was determined to continue Abraham's work. She started an intense self analysis which lasted for many years. She considered herself Abraham's pupil and her work a contribution and development of both Freud's and Abraham's. She found her work in Berlin under constant attack. Anna Freud had started work with children at about the same time that Melanie Klein did. Their approaches were both very different. There were conflict and controversy between the two (Hergenhahn, 2001). The Berlin society considered Klein's work "unorthodox" (Segal, 1979).

In 1925, Klein met Ernest Jones at a conference in Salzburg, where she gave her first paper on the technique of child analysis. Jones was very impressed with her and he invited her to give some lectures on child analysis in England. She gave six lectures which formed the basis of the initial part of her first book, The Psychoanalysis of Children. The three weeks in which she gave these lectures, she considered one of the happiest times of her life.

In 1927, she established herself in England. Along with her was, Eric, her son, Melitta her daughter, and her daughter's husband, Dr. Walter Schmideberg. Melitta and her husband were both doctors and practicing psycho analyses. Her oldest son, Hans, followed in his father's track, became an engineer, and remained in Berlin (Segal, 1979).

Melanie Klein biggest contribution was to the field of child-analysis. Melanie Klein and others before her realized that one could not make a child lay on a couch and free-associate. She noticed the natural way that children played. Melanie Klein came up with a technique called the play technique. This technique was used in child analysis. She noticed that the child's national way of expressing their self was play. Therefore, play could be used as a way of communication for analyzing children. She demonstrated the way that children played with toys revealed the beginning stages of infantile fantasies and anxieties. She also observed how children's unconscious thought could be understood by their nonverbal behavior. These views were different from Anna Freud. Anna thought that children were not analyzable. She concluded that, given the right conditions, the child's free play, as well as whatever verbal communications he is capable of, could serve a purpose similar to that of free association in adults. Melanie Klein found that even though children do not have a sense of illness in the adult sense, they suffer from acute anxieties. Her play technique was conceived as a method of communication with the child which allowed her to affix to psychoanalytical principles. The first child was her youngest son, Eric. Her theory of child play was very successful and is still used worldwide today.

Klein was the main contributor to what we know now as the term Object Relations. This term was first introduced by the concept of object choice which corresponds to an infant and his/her caretaker. These caretakers were the objects of the infant's needs and desires. Melanie Klein coined the term objects. And years later the object relations theory came about. According to her theory, a child who did not receive well enough nurturing care, increased the likelihood that the child would retreat to a make believe world filled with fantasy objects. The child would generate these imaginary objects to try and satisfy their need for real life objects (Segal, 1979).

Melanie Klein made profound contributions to the field of psychology. She de-emphasized biological drives and emphasized the importance of interpersonal relationships in the psychoanalytical field, stressed the importance of mother-child relationship, and her greatest accomplishment was the Object Relations Theory (Hergenhahn, 2001). Klein continued to work in field of psychoanalysis until she died in 1960 from hemorrhaging from an operation (Segal, 1979). She had many successful moments in her life as a woman and made many contributions to the psychoanalysis field.

References

• Grosskurth, Phyllis. (1986). Melanie Klein Her World and Her Work. New York: Random House.

• Hergenhahn, B. R. (2001). An Introduction to the History of Psychology. California: Wadsworth.

• Segal, Hanna. (1979). Melanie Klein. New York: The Viking Press.