Melanie Klein Essay Example

begin. Donaldson. 2002) After moving to Budapest, Klein soon met Sandor Ferenczi, a man who would teach her the beginnings of knowledge in psychoanalysis. Ferenczi was also the one who urged Klein to attend the International Psycho-Analytic Congress that was to be held in Budapest that year, and where she would go on to meet her greatest inspiration for her theories to come, Sigmund Freud. (Donaldson, 2002) Klein was so impressed by Freud’s presentation that it solidified her interests in psychoanalysis.

She began learning and experimenting with psychoanalysis on her own children as a suggestion per Ferenczi, which in turn she developed her most famed theory, “play theory. ” Play theory was the idea that children express their emotional connections through play time similar to how adults connect dreams to emotional/free association. (Klein) After a short while of developing her “play theory”, Klein began feeling the shortfalls of her marriage and decided to leave Arthur with her children and move to Berlin.

While in Germany, Klein joined the Berlin Psycho Analytic Society where she further developed her theories and met another famous psychoanalyst by the name of Karl Abraham. With little support in Berlin, Klein began learning as much as possible from Abraham, and even began to instill some of his knowledge into her own ideas. A short while later (and the death of Abraham) Berlin became hard for Klein to live in, so she again uprooted her children and left for her final place of rest, London. (Donaldson. 002) In London as a member of the British Psycho-Analytical Society Klein felt more at home than she had in years.

In London

Klein received much more praise and support from other psychoanalysts, and continued her research development with much more help than she had ever received. Throughout her career Klein had made several great contributions to the world of psychotherapy but in London she made her most progressive work. Here she founded here most developed theories in object relations, and depressive position. From her works also came a new school of thought which is now called Kleinianism.

This school of thought is one that would combat Freudianism for years to come, just as most of Klein’s ideas had. Initially Klein rather impressed with Freud’s theories on child behavior development as stated earlier, but began to sway and develop from this idea after working with her children more and more. Freud’s theories essentially stated that any instinct has a source (emotion), goal (aim), and an object (person or thing) and all parts have a deeper meaning. Freud believed that the main goal for these instincts is to be pleased or satisfied.

The thought process behind this was to explain how babies create relationships or connect with the outside world. Freud thought that from infancy, children were motivated by sexual urges, which he called his libido theory. From this he developed the idea that the first four-six years were the most important years of a person’s life, and Freud’s stages of development were born. This time is when a child will take in aspects of people such as parents, or parts of a person, and make it part of themselves to shape who they become later in life. Feist & Feist, 2008) From infancy to two years

of age Freud thought oral pleasures were the child’s drive (sucking on mother’s breast).

From age two till four it was anal (learning to go to the bathroom and controlling it). From four until six the pleasure aspect was at the genitals (learning the difference between female and male). Freud places a heavy emphasis on the Father in these relationships and believed also these early relationships would shape and be responsible for nearly everything in the life of the child thereafter. (Melanie, Klein) Klein took Freud’s theories and developed them for years to come.

To begin, she felt that it was not in fact the first four-six years that were most important but instead the first four-six months of the infantile life. Klein believed that in this stage the infant would create the strongest bonds between Phantasy (unconscious state of mind) and reality. It was thought that phantasy was how infants would explain the real world to the internal mind, because they are mainly unconscious during this period, she believed it was difficult to determine which world was phantasy and which one was reality.

Building also off of Freud, Klein determined that the more emphasized figure in an infant/child’s life was the mother figure instead of the previously believed father figure. This idea was made through the part association of breastfeeding and the important connection infants make between the strong hunger emotion and this part. It was believed that when an infant is hungry and is given breast, it will return the loving emotion because it is satisfied.

Likewise Klein insisted that if the infant was hungry and was denied the

breast, it will return the aggression response and reject the mother. (Feist & Feist, 2008) Klein thought that instead of only Libido controlling the drives or instincts as Freud had suggested, instead it was both aggression and libido. When Freud had suggested that the third stage of development was a desire for the mother (based on the Greek myth Oedipus), he believed that it was a jealousy struggle between the child and the Father for a prohibited object.

Klein on the other hand believed now it to be a more aggression-hatred response to a power based struggle between the child and father for who controlled the object. What Klein gathered from this new theory was that infants are at a constant war with themselves between love and hate emotions. This is what led Klein to the theory of Paranoid-Schizoid position. Paranoid-Schizoid position is the thought that infants begin to see the world as having good and bad objects in which they must learn to deal with.

Klein determined that the Ego would split and control both the love and hate emotions to deal with these objects as the infant encountered them. (Feist & Feist, 2008) This new position would lead Klein to the next big contribution to Psychoanalysis, the depressive position. This position is when the infant soon begins to adapt to the fear of abandonment and the want to destroy the mother. The child will begin to feel atonement for the aggression thoughts, as well as understanding that the mother will not abandon them (Mohamed. 011).

These two positions are often regarded as Klein’s most important contributions to psychology, but her

progressive thoughts on developing phantasy/fantasy from Freud should not be overlooked either. With an impressive career all achieved without a PhD or M. D, its obvious why Melanie Klein is one of the most important women in psychology today. Becoming the first person to actually psychoanalyze children instead of adults she was able to create a technique that is still in use today “play technique” or play therapy.

Afterwards only to go on and develop Freudian theory even further and define Phantasy/fantasy in a clearer image, all the way to redefining the stages of development into Paranoid-schizoid position and Depressive position. All these contributions would become known as Kleinianism to which her life was devoted to up until her unfortunate death from cancer in 1960. (Donaldson. 2002) All throughout history it was a firm belief that women were inferior to men in several ways, but thanks to passionate, progressive thinkers like Melanie Klein, that belief was dismantled long ago.