Melanie Klein and Anna Freud: The discourse of the early dispute

Divisions in the field of the psychoanalysis of children can be traced to a dispute over the infantile super-ego between the theorists Melanie Klein and Anna Freud beginning in 1927. These divisions are understood within the analytic world as the result of scientific disputation between alternative valid theories. An examination of the language, claims, and epistemology of Klein's and Freud's publications in 1927 that marked the public commencement of the conflict, reveals a personalized discourse in which authority was derived from the allegiance, experience, and personal analytic standing of the contestants as much as from theoretical insight. The structure and rhetoric of the debate suggest that, rather than terminating the dispute, the publications of 1927 served to encourage professionalization in child analysis and establish Anna Freud and Melanie Klein as authoritative alternative theorists.     

Between practice and theory: Melanie Klein,Anna Freud and the development of child analysis

An examination of the early history of child analysis in the writings of Melanie Klein and Anna Freud reveals how two different and opposing approaches to child analysis arose at the same time. The two methods of child analysis are rooted in a differential emphasis on psychoanalytic theory and practice. The Kleinian method derives from the application of technique while the Anna Freudian method is driven by theory. Furthermore, by holding to the Freudian theory of child development Anna Freud was forced to limit the scope of child analysis, while Klein's application of Freudian practice has led to new discoveries about the development of the infant psyche.     

The debate between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein: An historical survey

In this paper I attempt to provide an overview of the professional dialogue between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. I examine relevant theoretical and biographical issues, and reflect on divergencies. My conclusion is that each of them highlighted a different but valuable aspect of children's mental life, and that together their theories laid the foundation for a comprehensive mental health service for children.     

Hineni and Transference: The Remembering and Forgetting of the Other

Emmanuel Levinas proposed a philosophical critique that worked to unsettle and decenter generalizing, totalizing, and thematizing attempts to define the self. However, on the other hand, Levinas provides the space for the formation of a configuration of the self that has been conditioned by ethical relation and even points to some of the ingredients for (or shape of) such a self. Throughout Levinas’ work, the concept of hineni (“Here I am”) is used to illustrate the moral event that best characterizes the “psyche.” In the following paper, we consider how to apply the notion of hineni to modern psychological constructs of the human self. In the first section, we flesh out the characteristics of a self lived as hineni. We argue that such a self is “shaped” or oriented morally toward the outside and is radically exposed to the Other (not merely a bearer of moral consciousness or moral attributes). It is a remembering of the preoriginal and primordial ethical relation. In the second section, we use the psychoanalytic concept of transference to illustrate how the moral shape of the self can be forgotten, and how the self enters a state of “mineness” wherein the Other is reduced to one’s own history (Levinas 1990). In this state of forgetfulness, we argue that a “concreteness of egoism” (Levinas 1969) is maintained and a self lived toward the outside remains untenable. Transference, we argue, is an impoverished relation and a forgetting of and violence to the Other. Its proper use, however, in the therapeutic alliance allows for the possibility of a remembering of the Other and a calling beyond oneself.

Wilhelm Reich and Anna Freud: His expulsion from psychoanalysis

This article describes the growth of hostility towards Wilhelm Reich in the psychoanalytic community over his Marxist ideology and activism as well as disagreements over the death instinct. It brings to the fore the behind the scenes political manipulations between Ernest Jones and Anna Freud to effect the expulsion of Reich both from the Vienna and Berlin local psychoanalytic societies and from the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). It describes Reich's reactions to these events and the pressure placed on other psychoanalysts to stop supporting him and also the revision of history about the expulsion. It discusses the use of the term "crazy" as it was used in the psychoanalytic movement. Further the article discusses personality attributes of Anna Freud leading to counter-transference possessiveness to children and women, especially patients. It briefly touches on the attitudes of both Sigmund and Anna Freud toward sex and how this furthered the clash with Reich. It discusses the similarity between Anna's actions toward the Burlingham children and what happened to the children of Reich.     

Anna Freud and the Holocaust: Mourning and survival guilt

This article explores the period of Anna Freud's life after she was informed of the deaths of her aunts in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Understanding of this period may be enhanced by consideration of the role of the Holocaust in her complicated mourning process. A series of her dreams is re‐examined from the point of view of survivor guilt and the complicated mourning of her father in the context of the Holocaust. It is argued that unconscious reproaches against her father led to an identification with him that included his ‘decision’ to leave his sisters in Vienna. Survivor guilt in relation to her aunts’ murders is seen as one of the complicating factors in the mourning process. In addition the article discusses the possible role of this period, particularly her work with child concentration camp survivors, in her post‐war writing. The noted duality in her work between innovation and conservatism is explored in terms of an outcome of the mourning process of this period. It is argued that her views on mourning, trauma, attachment, and the widening scope of indications for psychoanalysis were influenced by the outcome of her mourning process. Finally, an irony is noted in the fact that her attitude about altruism never changed despite the role of the altruism of others in her rescue from the Nazis.     

Anna Freud and Observation: Memoirs of Her Colleagues from the Hampstead War Nurseries

ABSTRACT

Initially, Anna Freud did not wish to carry out systematic observations; rather, she wanted to be in the field while maintaining an analytical attitude with a free-floating attention. Based on memories of her employees Manna Friedmann, Anneliese Schnurman, Hansi Kennedy, and Joyce Robertson, this article discusses the way in which Anna Freud taught them to observe the children. She also observed those very colleagues who were observing, in order to be able to convey to them, a psychoanalytic view of the children.     

The partnership between the Early Intervention Institute,St Petersburg,and the Anna Freud Centre,London

The authors describe study and teaching links between the Early Intervention Institute in St Petersburg and the Anna Freud Clinic in London. Some brief clinical examples from a variety of settings are given as well as a longer case presentation. The impact of widespread institutional care, alcoholism and terrible housing conditions on child mental health are illustrated. This raises questions about the role of child psychotherapy when social conditions are so harsh. The case material indicates that, despite this, children can be helped in some measure to feel more secure, by the therapist providing constancy and reliability within an often frightening and dangerous external world.     

The role of identification in the resolution of trauma: the Anna Freud memorial lecture

In studies on the consequences of trauma, identifications have too often been overlooked. Trauma is experienced as an assault and can lead to an automatic, unconscious identification with the aggressor. Trauma is associated with a constellation of identifications, including identification with the aggressor, with the victim, with the rescuer, and with the caregiver. Identifications are important for the recovery from and mastery of trauma.     

Learning and teaching the theories of Melanie Klein

I shall attempt to bring together here thoughts of experienced clinicians and teachers who have taught Melanie Klein's theories to child psychotherapists. However, most of the contributors have also taught Klein to clinical trainees in adult psychoanalytic work and to different groups abroad and, in some cases, to already trained psychotherapists or psychoanalysts. Klein's theories are introduced at different stages in the different child psychotherapy programmes in London. For instance, the students at the Tavistock are introduced to Klein's theories before they are necessarily in their own psychoanalysis, while other trainings introduce her theories in the introductory years of the clinical training.

William Halton is one of the longest-running teachers of Klein in the Tavistock Child Psychotherapy Training and brings his 'framework' culled from many years of experience. Maria Rhode has taught the Narrative to students at the Tavistock for many years. Elizabeth Spillius, psychoanalyst, writer and teacher, brings her experiences teaching Klein to non-Kleinians. Karen Proner teaches at the Tavistock, in Italy and the United States.

TEACHING MELANIE KLEIN William Halton 10 Lincoln Road London N2 9DL     

Anna Freud: The Hampstead War Nurseries and the role of the direct observation of children for psychoanalysis

The psychoanalytic tradition of direct observation of children has a long history, going back to the early 20th century, when psychoanalysis and the emerging field of 'child studies' came into fruitful contact in Freud's Vienna. As a leading figure in the attempted integration of direct observation with the new psychoanalytic knowledge emerging from the consulting room, Anna Freud played a crucial role in the emergence of this field. But her major contribution to the theory and practice of observing children came during the Second World War, when she founded the Hampstead War Nurseries. The author describes in detail this important period of Anna Freud's career, and discusses the impact it had on later work. He explores the theoretical contribution that Anna Freud made in the post-war years to the debate about the place of direct observation in psychoanalysis, and concludes that Anna Freud's 'double approach' (direct observation plus analytic reconstruction) still has a great deal to offer as a method of both psychoanalytic research and education.     

Adrian Stokes and the portrait of Melanie Klein

This paper focuses on the offer by the art writer Adrian Stokes to commission and pay for a portrait of the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein by the artist William Coldstream. It details some of the precursors of this offer in Stokes's preceding involvement first with Klein and then with Coldstream; her response to this offer; and its outcome and aftermath in Stokes's subsequent writing about Klein and Coldstream.     

“淑女之争”与“君子协议”:回眸英国精神分析学会的“论战”

20世纪40年代,英国精神分析学会内部爆发一场影响全世界精神分析学发展的"战争"。以Anna Freud和Melanie Klein各自为首的精神分析师团体围绕潜意识幻想、本能与力比多以及精神分析培训与教学等一系列主题展开激烈争论,即历史上著名的"Freud-Klein论战"。这场"论战"就精神分析培训问题达成协议,并直接导致克莱因学派、维也纳学派和独立学派三"组"鼎立的英国精神分析时局。"论战"促使了客体关系精神分析与自我心理学的分离,推动了精神分析研究从驱力模式向关系模式的范式转变,奠定了后续精神分析运动发展的格局。     

Infantile sexuality: Its place in the conceptual developments of Anna Freud and Donald W. Winnicott

This essay explores the place of infantile sexuality in the theories of Anna Freud and Donald W Winnicott. Both Anna Freud and D.W. Winnicott incorporated and at the same time changed the classical psychoanalytic account of infantile sexuality and the instinctual drives. Whilst Anna Freud remained closer to her father's original conceptualization, she developed a multidimensional model of development which gave the drives a foundational status whist also maintaining their significance in giving meaning and texture to children's subjective experience. Winnicott also retained much of S. Freud's original theorizing except that in a fundamental way he turned it on its head when considering earliest development. For him the establishment of the self was paramount, and the drives and infantile sexuality merely served to give substance to that self.     

Between the quills: Schopenhauer and Freud on sadism and masochism

It is a matter of common knowledge that Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) shared a common worldview. Everyone familiar with the works of these two thinkers should recognize their general philosophical affinities. Both men were pessimistic about the power of human reason and attributed human behavior to powerful unconscious forces and, as a result, both were deeply skeptical about the future of human society. Drawing from previous literature, this essay compares the philosophical theory of Schopenhauer with the psychoanalytic theory of Freud. We find that, while Schopenhauer and Freud share a common philosophical orientation and diagnosed the same fundamental problems with life in civilization, they proposed some ostensibly similar, yet ultimately very different solutions. Focusing on each thinker's respective notion of sadism and masochism, this paper tries to understand and come to terms with the dimensions of this radical pessimism.     

The Perennial Freud: Method versus Myth and the Mischief of Freud Bashers

Nowadays Freud bashing is not only à la mode, in certain circles it has become de rigueur. Once a name of respect, Freud has become a name of ridicule. But like any scientific method, body of knowledge, and therapeutic procedure, psychoanalysis should be subjected to critical scrutiny. The recent crop of hostile Freud critics may have filled a vacuum left for decades by a psychoanalytic establishment which, like the Church of yesteryear, shunned all forms of criticism intramural and extramural. A central guiding idea of this essay is the distinction between the psychoanalytic method and psychoanalytic doctrines, hypotheses, and theories. This distinction has been invariably confused by both Freud's adherents and Freud's attackers. Moreover, arguments ad rem have been conflated with arguments ad hominem. A socially responsible criticism must seek to be constructive and not merely destructive. It is the latter course that was taken by the various hostile critics that came to be labeled as Freud bashers. The time has come to take a stand against the more egregious attacks on Freud and the psychoanalytic method.     

Anna Freud exposes herself to criticism. "The ego and and the mechanisms of defense" under the magnifying glass]

In the early 1970's members and guests of the Hampstead Clinic, under the guidance of Joseph Sandler, discussed Anna Freud's The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, which had been published in 1936, with its author. Elrod presents this discussion in excerpts and emphasizes the undogmatic approach to psychoanalytic theory evident in Anna Freud's and Joseph Sandler's contributions.     

The embodied analyst: from Freud and Reich to relationality

This paper presents the impact of clinical supervision on once-weekly psychoanalytically-informed training psychotherapy. The development of Oedipus complex theory is presented, culminating in Britton's work on the triangular space that opens up by working through the complex. The geometry of psychic space is described to highlight the importance of supervision, especially when training in therapy. The theme of spiders and cobwebs emerging from the clinical material provides a powerful metaphor for the tensions in psychic space. In the course of this training, the trainee therapist was at times less able to benefit fully from supervision, and thus the third position partially collapsed. Vignettes from anonymised clinical work are presented in the three ‘phases’ of this therapeutic process, illustrating the impact of the presence – and relative absence – of supervision.     

Infantile anorexia,co‐excitation and co‐mastery in the parent/baby cathexis: The contribution of Sigmund and Anna Freud

Recent epidemiological studies show that 2% of babies in ordinary paediatric clinics suffer from infantile anorexia. In the first part of this paper we present a case study from our hospital clinical activity. Our framework combines clinical psychoanalytic sessions and perinatal videos. In the second part, we will focus on the concepts of instinct and excitation proposed by Sigmund Freud and the concept of mastery proposed by Anna Freud. In the third part, we will examine these concepts in the light of the case study. The fourth part is devoted to clinical recommendations from our hospital psychoanalytic practice. In conclusion, unlike other clinical settings, the psychoanalytic setting allows for the elaboration of the parental hatred included in the libidinal cathexis. Our psychoanalytic setting (sessions/videos) makes it possible to decontaminate parental intrapsychic elements overloaded with excitement, saturated with hate elements, and rendered sterile by the instinct for mastery. An initial part of the treatment process involves working through the intersubjective elements observed in the video.