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Object Relations: Melanie Klein Pt. 1

She was an iconoclast who straddled the line between orthodox Freudianism while at the same time adding many new elements from her experience in child psychology. Like most other theorists, she used her own psyche and her environment for material for her theories and analytical practice. Her life was full of struggle and triumph, full of allies and enemies, including within her own family. This is a story of a woman who had to push through towards recognition starting from childhood all the way through her life. This is the story of Melanie Klein.

Forbidden Wishes

Melanie Klein was born in 1882 soon after her family had arrived in Vienna. Typical of most families Melanie was in an environment of siblings where a lot of early attachments were made, as well as defenses put up. Like other psychoanalysts, autobiographical material would factor into her theories and insights, which are mostly found in her writings collection. British Psychoanalyst Roger Money-Kyrle said "it is worth noting that, like Freud himself and many others, she practised self-analysis, so the works she published were almost certainly the result of analytic observations made both on her patients and on herself, cross-checked against each other." Phyllis Grosskurth, in Melanie Klein: Her World and Her Work, was able to put together information that originally was to be Melanie's autobiography, to flesh out some the bones in Melanie's story.

Melanie's interactions with siblings and her parents was a mixed bag, like it is with most families, and there were lasting impressions. She was born into a Jewish family that was secular. Her father Moriz Reizes was on his second marriage with Libbusa Deutsch. No reason survived in the documents as to why he divorced his first wife. It was an unsuccessful marriage that was soon dissolved when he was 37. On a trip to Vienna he met Libbusa, who was from Warbotz Slovakia. Her name is after the mythical founder of Prague. "He immediately fell in love with this 'educated, witty, and interesting' young woman, with her fair complexion, fine features, and expressive eyes." In Melanie's view, Libbusa's family was the side of the family that was the most intellectual and tolerant. Libbusa herself spoke with the air of being a down-to-earth mother grounded with the day to day life of taking care of the household while the husband had to find work where he could in his midlife. "They could not have been so naïve as to harbor any expectation that a middle-aged Jewish doctor of Polish origin could achieve professional success. Dr. Reizes was forced to take on a dental practice (indeed, he seems at first to have been a dentist’s assistant) and to supplement his income by acting as medical consultant to a vaudeville theater...Their difficult financial circumstances made it necessary for Libussa to open a shop—not only in itself a humiliation for a doctor’s wife, but also personally distasteful because in addition to plants she sold reptiles, from which she cringed in horror. Melanie does not speculate on her mother’s choice of a somewhat bizarre type of shop, but notes that such was the power of her mother’s beauty that customers loved to drop in to chat with her. She adds that Libussa’s customers 'understood' that she was a 'lady,' not a common shopkeeper—a rather curious disclaimer for her to feel obliged to make. One of Melanie’s earliest memories was of being taken to visit this place into which her mother disappeared every day. The shop was an integral part of their lives until 1907, when Libussa was finally relieved of this burden." Melanie's Uncle Hermann was of great help and lent money to the family to eventually acquire a house.

Melanie went to school with many other students of a different age than hers, but she was very happy nonetheless and caught the family bug for acquiring knowledge and earned good marks on her report card. Her mother "Libussa and her two sisters were consumed with a passion for learning, and these determined young autodidacts gained knowledge by reading and discussions with their father. Melanie admired the way her mother had taught herself to play the piano. She had a vivid recollection of Libussa pacing up and down the wide veranda of a summer flat they rented in Dornbach, on the outskirts of Vienna, totally absorbed in a book of French idioms she was memorizing. For Klein this was a demonstration of intellectual passion, since opportunities for her mother to put these idioms to practical use were almost nonexistent. There is evidence that as a young woman Libussa did have some respect for learning: she was attracted to her future husband partly because of his command of ten languages. Other relatives recalled Karoline as the clever sister, while Libussa was known as the beauty of the family. In any event, Libussa’s later letters are written in a German that indicates the language did not come easily to her...Certainly Melanie often detected dissatisfaction in her mother—and possibly contempt. 'I have never been able to get to the bottom of this, whether she was simply not passionate or not passionate as far as my father was concerned, but I do believe that occasionally I saw a slight aversion against sexual passion in her, which might have been the expression of her own feeling or upbringing, etc'...Klein could never recall an occasion when her parents went out alone together. She evokes a united Jewish family; while not rigidly orthodox, Melanie’s childhood was steeped in Jewish ceremonial, and she was always deeply aware of her Hebraic background. Both parents maintained a strong feeling for the Jewish people, 'though,' she remarks cryptically, 'I am fully aware of their faults and shortcomings.' She would never have been able to live in Israel, she asserts. At one point her mother tried to keep a kosher household but soon abandoned the attempt, particularly as she was opposed by her strong-minded children. Klein describes the circle in which they grew up in Vienna as 'anti-Orthodox.' Some Jewish observances were made but Klein felt there was no piety behind them." She was clued into this when her mother talked admiringly of a dying student with tuberculosis in her hometown who towards the end didn't believe in any god. She may have loved him. "While always feeling 'Jewish,' [Melanie] was never a Zionist, and her way of life was in no way distinguishable from that of a Gentile. Yet as a Jewish child in Catholic Vienna she must have been acutely conscious that she was an outsider and a member of an often persecuted minority. Psychoanalysis became for many Jews a religion with its own rites, secrets, and demands of unswerving loyalty. Melanie Klein, when she eventually discovered psychoanalysis, embraced it as ardently as any convert to the Catholic Church."

At times she was teased by her brother Emanuel in her early days, but they became closer as they grew up. Her older sister Sidonie with "violet-blue eyes, her black curls, and her angelic face" took pity and helped Melanie with reading and arithmetic early on. Unfortunately she died young from Scrofula. "I have a feeling that I never entirely got over the feeling of grief for her death." Emanuel was aggressive and rebellious because he was told he had heart problems and would die young because of his past scarlet and rheumatic fevers. He helped Melanie with her with Latin and Greek so she could enter an advanced secondary school and expected her to achieve great success. Melanie felt indebted to him and thought he would achieve much in his life if he had better health. "From a very early age I heard the most beautiful piano-playing, because he was deeply musical, and I have seen him sitting at the piano and just composing what came into his mind. He was a self-willed and rebellious child and, I think, not sufficiently understood. He seemed at loggerheads with his teachers at the gymnasium, or contemptuous of them, and there were many controversial talks with my father...My brother was deeply fond of my mother, but gave her a good deal of anxiety."

Melanie Klein Trust: https://melanie-klein-trust.org.uk/timeline/1882-1902/

Melanie's father was an influence, even if at times he was aloof with her. "As a child, Melanie loved hearing about her father’s courage during a cholera epidemic. In answer to an appeal for doctors to go out to the Polish villages, he not only went but, unlike the other doctors who would stand at the windows telling the victims what to do, Moriz Reizes boldly entered the cottages and treated the patients as he would have done if they had been suffering from any other complaint. When he returned, he found a letter from his mother imploring him not to risk his life. Whether this act of heroism actually happened or not is immaterial; Klein believed that it had." Although there were some disappointments when he refused her attention, and when he made clear her sister Emile his favorite. "'I don’t think I sufficiently understood my father, because he had aged so much by this time'...He was an 'old fifty' when she was born. 'I have no memories of his ever playing with me.'" Melanie and Emilie would continue to have a love-hate relationship until the end. Emilie's dreary life compared to her sister's eventual success led to some letters having an "I'm not jealous, but I am" quality to them. "Emilie, too, seems to have been caught up in the family pattern of guilt-inducement. If one of them had good fortune, the other had to pay for it." In one letter, after Melanie published a book, Emile confessed that "even if I have been unapproachable at times, that in secret I have always appreciated and admired your strong will!...[Melanie] had to assert herself in view of the fact that her mother told her that she had been unwanted, Sidonie was the best-looking in the family, her father openly expressed his preference for Emilie, and Emanuel was considered something of a genius..."

As destiny was predicted, Emanuel died young at 25 of heart failure, ending his ambitions of artistic grandeur. He also suffered from tuberculosis and may have used morphine and cocaine to manage the pain. "Emanuel convinced himself that his main motive for abandoning his medical studies and leaving Vienna was his certainty that he was doomed to an early death; he intended to live life to the full in the time left to him. His mother shared his view that the climate of Vienna was detrimental to his health, and she settled a small allowance on him to enable him to seek lands of sun and beauty in the traditional pattern of the dying artist. It was in this role that Emanuel saw himself, and he dramatized the situation to the full. His letters for the next couple of years are full of complaints about the meagerness of his allowance." As he travelled in Italy he exchanged letters with family members and complained of the "out of sight, out of mind" neglect he was feeling. He laid down in a hotel in Genoa one night and died. The hotelkeeper was curt and demanded expenses to be taken care of, considering the cleanup job needed for tuberculosis and superstitions future guests may have. His wife was more empathetic. "Perhaps it will console you a little to hear that your son passed away completely without pain. He was lying in his bed as if he were asleep, death throes can absolutely not have occurred; he had not even stretched himself. He was lying on one side, the eyes closed, the right hand near the face, the left one under the blanket, exactly as one does when one makes oneself comfortable in bed to go to sleep. Had he not been cold and stiff, one would never have believed that anybody could look so peaceful in death. The authorities sent two more doctors round, but all three were agreed that heart failure had brought his life to an end."

Despite struggling to enter the Gymnasium, when Melanie passed the entrance examinations, she had strong motivation. "Not only did she intend to study medicine, she asserted, but she planned to specialize in psychiatry—an extraordinary ambition for a middle-class Jewish girl when one thinks of the vicissitudes Freud was encountering in his profession at that very time in Vienna. About this time, Moriz Reizes’ health began to deterioriate rapidly, and the household was held together by the indomitable Libussa. Melanie seldom had a new dress; the theater or a concert was a rare event; but she felt gloriously alive, infused with that deepest of all the passions, intellectual fervor. Unknown to her mother, she read far into the night—an indication that her mother did not encourage her intellectual interests. Her homework she did on the tram between home and school. Her brother proudly introduced her to his friends, and Melanie blossomed into a vibrant young woman...Family circumstances may have been extremely stringent, but somehow enough money was found for a number of photographs of Melanie to have been taken during this period. She is a voluptuous dark beauty with heavy-lidded eyes, and already fully aware of her striking profile. She was aware, too, of her desirability, as all her brother’s friends seemed to be falling in love with her. When she was only seventeen she met her future husband (then twenty-one), a second cousin on her mother’s side, who was visiting Vienna from his home in what was then the Slovak part of Hungary." Despite her ambitions, Melanie settled quickly on Arthur Klein. She said that at the time she had a "passionate temperament" and "it did not take very long for me to fall in love with him...From that time I was so loyal that I refrained from any entertainment where I might have met other young men and never expressed a feeling that I already had in my mind, that we were not really suited to one another. Both loyalty to my fiancé, with whom I was up to a point in love, and circumstances, prevented me from mentioning this to my mother or my brother." By this time her father Moriz had already passed away of pneumonia and Alzheimer's. Not very much time later both Emilie, who married a lawyer, and Melanie were married with children. Libussa maintained the household and visited both families and helped them get settled, to the envy of Emanuel, who felt abandoned and forgotten towards the end of his life.

Melanie was now in the marriage, even though she knew it was a mistake, probably because she hadn't forgotten her prior professional ambitions. Her situation matched what Helene Deutsch felt about women who went into depression when family and children interfered with career ambitions and hobbies. Both sisters had trouble getting used to motherhood and the painstaking household chores. As household cleaning technologies and methods were developed, standards for cleanliness also increased, so chores became an area that women traditionally fought over. Either the extravagances were too expensive in order to keep up with the Joneses, so to say, or daughters and mothers couldn't agree on the correct or appropriate décor and fought over the details. This could also include servants and fighting with them if they couldn't meet expectations. Fights over parenting styles would be common between parents and spouses. Melanie at this time also fell into many depressions as she continued to have more children. In many cases, she had to escape to other towns and visit friends and family to deal with what her mother called "her nerves...Photographs taken of Klein during this period reveal the paralyzing depression in which she was entrapped. In her Autobiography she describes Arthur as 'difficult.' [He was also suffering from nerve pain, commonly called Neuralgia.] There is hardly a letter from Libussa during this period that does not refer to his 'nerves,' insomnia, and stomach complaints. Often he was too tired, too overworked, or too miserable to write to his wife, and Libussa conveyed messages from one to the other...Late in 1907 Arthur accepted a well-paid job as director of one of Count Henkel-Donnersmarck’s paper mills in upper Silesia. As a result, they had to move to Krappitz, a small, dreary provincial town without a single congenial soul with whom Melanie could converse. Even Rosenberg had seemed unbearably confining...upon her marriage in 1906. At this point Libussa, with little reluctance, was persuaded to come and stay with them. She was only too happy to do so because Arthur was now in a position to pay off Uncle Hermann for his investment in the house, and Libussa could finally give up the shop, which she rented out to a coffeehouse."

Object Relations: Helene Deutsch Pt. 1: https://rumble.com/v2wrvg5-object-relations-helene-deutsch-pt.-1.html

Object Relations: Helene Deutsch Pt. 2: https://rumble.com/v2yepky-object-relations-helene-deutsch-pt.-2.html

Libussa ended up being an interfering grandmother who micromanaged the household, despite being idealized in Melanie's later descriptions of her. "In the two and a half years they lived in Krappitz, Melanie seems to have been away almost as much as she was at home," especially in Abbazia where she underwent "carbonic acid baths and other current remedies for nerves." In one trip she was accompanied by a divorcee Klara Vágó who became a friend. "Every piece of advice [Libussa] gave her reinforced Melanie’s view of herself as a permanent semi-invalid" and she kept the unhappy husband and wife separated for the children's sake. "Libussa closed her eyes to the possibility that these separations were undermining the marriage. Everything had to accord with her conception of a conflict-free family situation...Arthur had to take frequent business trips and had plenty of opportunities for illicit amours if so inclined—and he might have been so inclined, considering that his wife was separated from him for weeks at a time and found sex distasteful even at the best of times. It is doubtful that we will ever know the truth about the marriage."

Even when Melanie returned home she still did not get over her depression. "She was becoming more entrapped than ever in her depressions, especially when her mother was visiting her. By May 1909 her fits of weeping and despair had reached such a point that she went to a sanatorium in Chur, Switzerland, for two and a half months in order to have a complete rest and change of scene...Melanie dreaded pregnancy..." Arthur at this time took the chance to leave the small town and move to Budapest. At this time Melanie's friend Klara was helping her be more assertive with her mother to take back the household and provided a role-model for emancipation. In her 30s she was pregnant again and had Erich, but everyone, including Libussa, were much older now. Libussa fell ill with cancer which was what was thought at the time due to her rapid weight loss. She contracted bronchitis and eventually passed away.

After her mother's death, Melanie wrote some minor works, including poetry and complete narratives. "Both poetry and prose are variations on a single theme: the longing of a woman for a richer and fuller life, particularly for sexual gratification, and the conflict that is stirred up by these forbidden wishes." Her wide reading eventually got her to Freud's works. "'About 1914' she read Freud’s 1901 paper on dreams, and realized immediately that 'that was what I was aiming at, at least during those years when I was so very keen to find what would satisfy me intellectually and emotionally. I entered into analysis with Ferenczi, who was the most outstanding Hungarian analyst.'" When she was with psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi, she became interested in learning how to practice psychoanalysis. He ended up influencing her later work in three areas: "the importance of raw and early emotion in the maternal bond, the importance of freedom and authenticity in the analytic relationship, and finally the use of transference and countertransference feelings." "During this analysis with Ferenczi, he drew my attention to my great gift for understanding children and my interest in them, and he very much encouraged my idea of devoting myself to analysis, particularly child-analysis. I had, of course, three children of my own at the time...I had not found…that education…could cover the whole understanding of the personality and therefore have the influence one might wish it to have. I had always the feeling that behind was something with which I could not come to grips."

Dreams - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gtf6j-dreams-sigmund-freud.html

Klein eventually became an assistant to Ferenczi and began observing her children. "Melitta and Hans had been brought up largely under the supervision of Libussa; but once Klein discovered psychoanalysis, [her son] Erich was subjected to the most intense scrutiny from at least the age of three. There is no reference to his infancy, a curious omission in view of her later theories." When her husband moved to Sweden to work and Melanie went back to Rosenberg, Slovakia, the separation led eventually to an official divorce. She eventually moved to Berlin and began a psychoanalysis practice. Melanie was very ambitious and began to publish because this was one of the ways to increase recognition and allow the possibility of freer travel in the future. It also explained the haste she felt to begin analyzing her children before taking on more analysands.

By the time she joined the The Hague Congress, she was in a very competitive attitude, and as expected professional territory was jealously guarded. She "met Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, who had already started analyzing children in Vienna by watching them at play...Klein tried to engage her in discussion, but was given a very cool reception. She later attributed this to Hug-Hellmuth’s view of her as a competitive threat, and any references Klein made to her tended to be extremely condescending." Klein already made her judgement. "Dr. Hug-Hellmuth was doing child analysis at this time in Vienna, but in a very restricted way. She completely avoided interpretations, though she used some play material and drawings, and I could never get an impression of what she was actually doing, nor was she analysing children under six or seven years. I do not think it too conceited to say that I introduced into Berlin the beginnings of child analysis."

Klein was now in a situation where she could attempt to find her place in psychoanalysis, but this is often when rivalry is at it's most intense, when a new system is discovered but it has yet to be exhausted, and there's a gold rush to stake an important claim, as can be seen by the explosion of new talent over the 20th century. "There was intense envy and rivalry among these early psychoanalytic pioneers...Klein’s career belonged in the category of those whose 'creative capacity may begin to show and express itself for the first time.'" Different analysts took a stand on whether child analysis was too dangerous. "Her creative potential, stifled for so many years, was finally unleashed, but she had to fight opposition every step of the way. For the historical record Klein claimed that once she arrived in Berlin, she soon widened her practice, but the fact of the matter is that she aroused misgivings among some of her colleagues. There was unease about the advisability of probing too deeply into a child’s unconscious...Apart from the consideration shown her by Abraham, she was always bitter about the way she was treated by the Berlin Society. Gradually some of her colleagues allowed her to analyze their children in what were known as 'prophylactic analyses.' In later life she complained that the only patients sent to her were children and the deeply disturbed relatives or patients of other analysts. Yet if it had not been for this, she might never have had the opportunity for intense observation of children." Regardless, she was right away aiming at changing parenting practices and cultural influences in schools so children could hopefully live a more liberated life and find their authenticity.

Repression

In The Development of a Child (1921), Melanie was very blunt and appeared to be on a mission to wipe out superstition and poor parenting practices, and in a way, abolish a form of parental abuse related to sexual shaming and ignorance. "The idea of enlightening children in sexual matters is steadily gaining ground. The instruction introduced in many places by the schools aims at protecting children during the age of puberty from the increasing dangers of ignorance, and it is from this point of view that the idea has won most sympathy and support...This ensures that wishes, thoughts and feelings shall not—as happened to us—be partly repressed and partly, in so far as repression fails, endured under a burden of false shame and nervous suffering." In her paper, she believed that developmentally appropriate sexual education allows children to build "...foundations for health and mental balance." Even though she renamed her son Erich to "Fritz," in her analysis of her son, the flimsy disguise was enough to fool many Kleinians. "The child in question is a boy, little Fritz, the son of relations who live in my immediate neighbourhood. This gave me the opportunity to be often in the child's company without any restraint. Further, as his mother follows all my recommendations I am able to exercise a far-reaching influence on the child's upbringing." When questioned with the evidence "one [Kleinian] said that she had always had the impression that 'the mother' in the background left something to be desired. Another said that he didn’t know what name to apply to this kind of analysis, but it had nothing to do with mothering. A third confessed rather poignantly that the revelation would make him reexamine the work he had been doing for thirty years since he now saw in a new light why Melanie Klein had underestimated the role of the mother. Many analysts had heard for years a rumor that she had analyzed her own children, but they had not linked this with actual case histories she had recorded. Elliott Jaques seems to take a sensible view: the exploration of the roots of anxiety could have been conducted initially in the only way open to her, and it is hindsight that queries its value. Pearl King (not a Kleinian) feels that it could have established 'a pathological transference'; but adds, 'to be fair, everyone was doing it at that time.'"

Klein proceeded to explain to young Erich the truth about Easter and Christmas activities and the agnostic worldview. She described a rudimentary explanation for copulation for humans and animals. The child's fantasies and games started turning more violent afterwards. "His games as well as his phantasies showed an extraordinary aggressiveness towards his father and also of course his already clearly indicated passion for his mother...Fritz listened with great interest and said, 'I would so much like to see how a child is made inside like that.' I explain that this is impossible until he is big because it can't be done till then but that then he will do it himself: 'But then I would like to do it to mamma.' 'That can't be, mamma can't be your wife for she is the wife of your papa, and then papa would have no wife.' 'But we could both do it to her.' I say, 'No, that can't be. Every man has only one wife. When you are big your mamma will be old. Then you will marry a beautiful young girl and she will be your wife.' He (nearly in tears and with quivering lips), 'But shan't we live in the same house together with mamma?' 'Certainly, and your mamma will always love you but she can't be your wife.' He then enquired about various details, how the child is 'fed in the maternal body, what the cord is made of how it comes away, he was full of interest and no further resistance was to be noticed. At the end he said, 'But I would just once like to see how the child gets in and out.'"

Melanie felt that this sample of one was already showing a therapeutic response compared to how other children were raised. "I am of the opinion that no upbringing should be without analytic help, because analysis affords such valuable and, from the point of view of prophylaxis, as yet incalculable assistance." The deficits for children she concluded were of a wide variety, including, being anti-social, aloof, apathy, lost self-confidence, and diffidence. "What early analysis can do is to afford protection from severe shocks and to overcome inhibitions. This will assist not only the health of the individual but culture as well, in that the overcoming of inhibitions will open up fresh possibilities of development. In the boy I watched it was striking how greatly his general interest was stimulated subsequent to the satisfying of a part of his unconscious questions, and how greatly his impulse for investigation flagged again because further unconscious questions had arisen and drawn his whole interest upon themselves. It is evident, therefore, that, to go more into detail, the effectiveness of wishes and instinctive impulses can only be weakened by becoming conscious. I can, however, state from my own observations that, just as in the case of the adult, so also with the young child this occurs without any danger...It is easier to control an emotion that is becoming conscious than one that is unconscious. Simultaneously with acknowledging his incest-wishes, however, he is already making attempts to free himself from this passion and to achieve its transference to suitable objects."

For researchers, this was before the later techniques that Melanie developed with play, but she was already seeing that unconscious questions, with realistic, concrete answers, allowed for better actions afterwards for the analysand. "Eric Klein remembers that when they went to Rosenberg in 1919, his mother set aside an hour every night before he went to sleep to analyze him and that she continued to do this after they moved to Berlin in 1920. He remarks dryly that he did not find the experience pleasurable, but he holds no grudge against her for it...It could be argued that Klein was more therapist than mother to Erich. He has no recollection of her playing with him, but she did hug him." In Analyst of the Imagination, Paul Roazen said of Melanie's daughter, "Melitta Schmideberg, would be at the extreme end of the spectrum of those who relished hatred of their mothers but, alas, not alone in her bitterness towards analytic parenting." Melitta did collaborate very closely with Melanie, had many great insights into psychoanalysis, but was clearly asserting her independence and wanting to move into different modalities to distinguish herself from her mother and get out from under her wing.

Even at the time of the paper, Klein did give herself an out because she found that anxiety wasn't only caused by complexes and that different children could face the same situations and react with more or less sensitivity. "For we learn from the analysis of neurotics that only a part of the injuries resulting from repression can be traced to wrong environmental or other prejudicial external conditions. Another and very important part is due to an attitude on the part of the child, present from the very tenderest years. The child frequently develops, on the basis of the repression of a strong sexual curiosity, an unconquerable disinclination to everything sexual that only a thorough analysis can later overcome. It is not always possible to discover from the analyses of adults—especially in a reconstruction—in how far the irksome conditions, in how far the neurotic predisposition, is responsible for the development of the neurosis. In this matter variable, indeterminate quantities are being dealt with. So much, however, is certain: that in strongly neurotic dispositions quite slight rebuffs from the environment often suffice to determine a marked resistance to all sexual enlightenment and a repression excessively burdensome to the mental constitution in general." This also appears in the school environment, especially during puberty when a boy for example is "bombarded by his sexuality, he feels himself at the mercy of wishes and desires which he cannot and may not satisfy." This may lead to a lack of zeal in school work, lack of ambition, and in extreme cases there may be criminality or suicide. "Expertly and correctly conducted, psycho-analysis holds no more danger for children than for adults; much 'successful work' with children convinces me of this. The widely-felt anxiety that analysis diminishes children's spontaneity is disproved in practice. Many children have had their liveliness fully restored by analysis after losing it in the welter of their conflicts. Even very early analysis does not turn children into uncultured and asocial beings. The' reverse is true; freed from inhibitions, they are now able to make full use of emotional and intellectual resources for cultural and social purposes, in the service of their development."

At this time Melanie was recording in her autobiography different stories as to when there was a divorce and it was obvious that she wanted out. "In 1919 Arthur Klein went to live and work in Sweden, and [Melanie] moved back from Budapest to Rosenberg with the children. Hungary was in turmoil; and she could see her own future only in negative terms: as she describes it, there seemed no possibility that she and Arthur could ever get together again." There was eventually a reunification of the family in Dahlem, but Arthur's attempts to regain control of the family led to him bullying Hans. "In addition to Arthur’s renewed tyranny, both his 'emotional attachment' in Sweden and her new career were incentives to attain the independence she had always half-consciously been seeking. She soon realized that a permanent separation was imperative. Yet to walk out on her husband was financially hazardous, and she risked losing custody of Erich. There were ugly quarrels. One day Erich saw a document lying on his father’s desk and could not resist reading it. It appeared that Arthur was going to seek to obtain custody of the boy on the grounds that his mother had used him as a guinea pig for her psychoanalytic experiments. When Erich told his mother about this, she said that Arthur had deliberately put the paper on the table where he knew Erich would see it." Melitta defended her mother against her father, but both mother and daughter were beginning to show envy and jealousy. Melanie was worried that her daughter who was able to pursue her studies earlier than she, was now in a position to surpass her before she could make her mark on history. They eventually collaborated and were able to produce good work together, but Melitta would later on introduce insightful critiques on the limits of psychoanalysis and poke fun at the snobbery, foolishness, and scandals in the psychoanalytical communities, as well as patients who expected a panacea from the method, and eventually found a better fit when she moved more into studying juvenile delinquency. She also entered into analysis with Edward Glover for a time who was mourning the disconnection between the British school and Freud's Orthodoxy. In The War Inside, Michal Shapira said that "initially, Melitta made frequent use of her mother’s ideas. Later, and as she went to analysis with Glover, her criticism of Klein grew. She withdrew from active participation in the BPAS in 1944." Later psychoanalysts viewed Melitta's and Edward's complaints as a form of stuffiness. In reality there was always a new kind of stuffiness replacing an older kind. All therapists tend to react to positive results in their patients as confirmation of efficacy of one method or another and each positive experience would lead therapists to pick their favorite modality, either orthodox, British, or American. Despite the hair splitting, Klein continued her work with children and studied the effects of the Oedipus Complex.

School Castration

Despite all these fearful Freudian terms and symbols, the best way to read and enjoy psychoanalytic descriptions is to understand the underlying viewpoint, which is Darwinian, and therefore it is about territory, power, control, and procreation. Libido is energetic craving, and we have many cravings that aren't overtly sexual. You can crave sunlight if you are indoors for too long, for example. The cravings want to feed physically with food, but there is sexual feeding and emotional feeding of all kinds. The mistake is to take things too literally and think everything is about overt sexuality, when it's more teleological. The child could feel "castrated" at school for example, but is not actually castrated, but instead is humiliated by the teacher in class when providing a stupid answer that is ridiculous and funny. The purpose of school is to have success in the workplace. Success in the workplace makes you more attractive as a provider and you will have more sexual partners to choose from as you gain more wealth, fame, and notoriety. It all connects to sex in that way, so there are many degrees of separation, but these innocuous activities can be the supports that are required before one becomes attractive, if ever. Being castrated is like being turned off, demoralized, like how you would feel when you are sternly rejected on a date or you were dumped after a long attachment or you went through a divorce. You're not likely to be in the mood for some time, whereas someone who achieved success and wants to celebrate, they will more likely be looking for a sexual partner because of their newfound confidence. If a person finds sexual partners an imposition to personal fulfillment in work or hobbies, many will put their love into work, artistic projects or leisure activities.

In The Role of the School in the Libidinal Development of the Child, Melanie pointed out that "...fear of examinations in dreams as in reality, is the fear of castration...[for students]." Boys and girls are afraid of being made fun of and they sometimes have fears related to how masculine or feminine they should appear. Just like adults, the kids can make associations and metaphors out of anything so dreams, daydreaming, and doodling will likely connect with other areas of their life where they are measuring how well they are doing at school, socializing, and with relationships at home. With kids, analyses with Klein showed a lot of Oedipus material, death wishes for parents, fornication with parents, along with jokes about private parts, toilet jokes and early birthing theories. Having trouble completing difficult school tasks is a feeling of impotence, whereas success leads to feelings of potency. "I have endeavoured to show that the fundamental activities exercised at schools are channels for the flow of libido and that by this means the component instincts achieve sublimation under the supremacy of the genitals. This libidinal [emotional investment], however, is carried over from the most elementary studies—reading, writing and arithmetic—to wider efforts and interests based upon these, so that the foundations of later inhibitions—of vocational inhibition as well—are to be found; above all, in the frequently apparently evanescent ones concerned with the earliest studies. The inhibitions of these earliest studies, however, are built upon play-inhibitions, so that in the end—we can see all the later inhibitions, so significant for life and development, evolving from the earliest play-inhibitions." So not being able to play at a rudimentary level for a particular field, like math, or history, means an unsuccessful sublimation of libido. For Klein, it goes back to fear of humiliation. "Castration-fear interferes with ego-activities and interests because, besides other libidinal determinants, they always have fundamentally a genital symbolic, that is to say, a coitus significance...We must refer the establishment of all the inhibitions which affect learning and all further development to the time of the first efflorescence of infantile sexuality which, with the onset of the Oedipus complex, gives its greatest momentum to the castration-fear, that is, to the early period between three and four years of age. It is the consequent repression of the active masculine components in both boys and girls that provides the chief basis for inhibitions of learning...The contribution which the feminine component makes to sublimation will probably always prove to be receptivity and understanding, which are an important part of all activities; the driving executive part, however, which really constitutes the character of any activity, originates in the sublimation of masculine potency." Here we can see a development from Ferenczi, who separated masculine and feminine energies into different tasks and interests, whereas Klein saw that most activities could be done with a mixture and both boys and girls could use femininity or masculinity without it appearing pathological.

Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy (Director's Cut): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ827lkktYs

Case Studies: 'Little Hans' - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gu93b-case-studies-little-hans-sigmund-freud.html

Sexuality Pt 2: Infantile Sexuality - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gtort-sexuality-pt-2-infantile-sexuality-sigmund-freud.html

Totem and Taboo - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gsmvn-totem-and-taboo-sigmund-freud.html

Melanie followed the typical Freudian view that creativity is essentially feminine and that both sexes needed to free up that libido as well as the masculine. "I was able repeatedly in analyses of boys and girls to see how important the repression of this feminine attitude through the castration complex might be. As an essential part of every activity, repression of it must contribute largely to the inhibition of any activity. It has also been possible to observe in analysing patients of both sexes how, as a part of the castration complex became conscious and the feminine attitude appeared more freely, there often occurred a powerful onset of artistic and other interests...Part of the inhibitions—and this is the more important for later development—resulting from the repression of genital activity directly affects ego activity and interest as such. Another part of the inhibitions results from the attitude to the teacher." For example, a male teacher could receive transference attitudes from a boy about his father, and since success is connected with sex with the mother figure in the Oedipus Complex, then the fear of fatherly retribution may appear as inhibition to perform well in front of the male teacher. "In girls the inhibition due to the castration complex and affecting all activity is of particular importance. The relationship to a male teacher that can be so burdensome to the boy acts on the girl, if her capabilities are not too inhibited, rather as an incentive. In her relationship to the mistress the anxiety attitude originating in the Oedipus complex is, in general, not nearly so powerful as is its analogue in the boy. That her achievements in life do not usually attain to those of the man is due to the fact that in general she has less masculine activity to employ in sublimation...The teacher can achieve much by sympathetic understanding, for he is able thereby considerably to reduce that part of the inhibition that attaches to the person of the teacher as 'avenger'. At the same time, the wise and kindly teacher offers the homosexual component in the boy and the masculine component of the girl an object for the exercise of their genital activity in a sublimated form, as which, as I suggested, we can recognize the various studies." As much as the teacher can reward both masculine and feminine energies, the children are bringing their complexes to school and would benefit from therapy in the view of Klein. "Where, however, repression of genital activity has affected the occupations and interests themselves, the attitude of the teacher can probably diminish (or intensify) the child's inner conflict, but will not affect anything essential as concerns his attainments. But even the possibility of a good teacher easing the conflict is a very slight one, for limits are set by the child's complex-formations, particularly by his relationship to his father, which determines beforehand his attitude towards school and teacher."

Developing The Self

The opportunities available in childhood to carve out skills, talents, and budding vocations, is a precious time because of how far reaching the impacts are in later life. This especially will echo in many later psychoanalysts when talking about the topic of authenticity. Certainly there can be economic disadvantages during this period and they limit what a child can develop, but finances don't guarantee authenticity if play, trial and error, and discovery is repressed. "We frequently find in psycho-analysis that neurotic inhibitions of talents are determined by repression having overtaken the libidinal ideas associated with these particular activities, and thus at the same time the activities themselves." For Klein, these inhibitions appeared in very typical demotivated states that children often present. "The following characteristics proved in a number of cases and in a typical way to be inhibitions: awkwardness in games and athletics and distaste for them, little or no pleasure in lessons, lack of interest in one particular subject, or, in general, the varying degrees of so-called laziness; very often, too, capacities or interests which were feebler than the ordinary turned out to be 'inhibited'".

You get the sense from psychoanalytic literature that scoring in soccer is like scoring in bed. The symbolism can be made to be overt by making it conscious and then using the lust and love feelings to fuel a sublimated task and derive proximate satisfaction. Even if people have to bring up lustful imagery in their minds transfer it into boring activities, there's a hinted practice in these texts that assume we should have already known this from the beginning in childhood play. Having "libidinal cathexis" is to have an emotional investment in a particular activity, like a sport, meaning simply that you like the sport. There's been so much inhibition throughout childhood, and not all of it is bad in the case of criminal activity, but if someone meditates, takes drugs or alcohol, or even engages in free association practices, which are a little like meditation, when inhibition is released momentarily a zeal can return in an anticipation of engaging in an activity, and possibly other activities that have been repressed. "I came to see that in far the greater number of these inhibitions, whether they were recognizable as such or not, the work of reversing the mechanism was accomplished by way of anxiety, and in particular by the 'dread of castration'; only when this anxiety was resolved was it possible to make any progress in removing the inhibition...By successful removal I do not simply mean that the inhibitions as such should be diminished or removed, but that the analysis should succeed in reinstating the primary pleasure of the activity." A success would then be that a person can see the enjoyment of the repressed activity and it can be engaged in again with appropriateness according to skill. Maybe a person will enjoy watching soccer if they have no facility to play it well enough to enjoy.

Just like with substances that relieve inhibitions, the zeal doesn't always arise first. There are "transitory symptoms" connected to the Castration Complex, where anger and hostility arise. Analysands begin to re-live the people and environments of the past where the intimidation occurred. "These again were principally resolved by way of anxiety. The fact that the removing of these inhibitions and symptoms takes place by way of anxiety surely shows that anxiety is their source." She quoted Franz Alexander who valued the emotional catharsis, or abreaction in the psychoanalytical experience. People needed to express their emotions by reliving the experience, understanding intellectually the impact of the castration and feel the emotions related, as if they were happening during the analysis. "Most of the suggested innovations in psychoanalytic technique involve a one-sided overemphasis on one or the other of two factors, both of which are essential for the curative effect of psychoanalytic therapy. These factors are emotional abreaction and intellectual insight. Emotional abreaction leads only to temporary symptomatic relief (as in the early hysteria analyses of Freud). On the other hand, intellectual insight without emotional experience is of little value. Every correct interpretation, 'serves both purposes,' integrating abreaction and insight into a single act." If at this point an analysand expresses the emotion fully of the castrating incident and discharges through venting, then the intellectual insight would focus on the activity more based on skill rather than just a hatred of the activity. The activity loses its sense of evil and looks more a matter of fact. All activities have easier and more complex parts to them. When in hatred only the complex parts are noticed. In a neutral view, or a positive view, there are easier elements to the skill that begin to show themselves as opportunities for growth.

Regardless of the method, skills will still have to be developed afterwards if the patient has a reason to take up the activity. There's also no guarantee that there won't be more authority figures providing fresh castration that an apprentice has to learn to ignore and focus instead with a learning mentality. The intellectual insight needs to catch authority figures in their jealousy, and to understand that they are afraid of being replaced. In many technical and professional jobs, knowledge that can't be found in books is jealously guarded and castration will be the norm until an authority figure is to move onto better opportunities and has to train an apprentice. At that point, the envy of students and candidates will be expressed as they wonder why they weren't chosen to be trained further. Certainly, the understudy that shows the most promise is sometimes taken on because they are viewed to be unstoppable and capable of changing organizations, make new professional connections, and compete directly with the master. The master then wants to control the trajectory of the prodigy, and also they want to bask in their future success. In other cases, there is nepotism, cronyism, and various other forms of bigotry, because the master wants to make a political statement and reward an inner circle and gain a future ally, if there are to be synergies in their professional work. As many students will attest, the psychology profession is full of patients at various levels of pathology so the envy tends to be directed against healthier psychologists with endless attempts at castration, because the envious feel the pain that they may never be cured completely, and those who are considered more pathetic are made fun of and castrated because they are seen as too incompetent to practice. Those who are more healthy have to decide if they want to join another profession that has a healthier culture, or walk the tightrope and network in the best places possible for development. Those who are more incompetent, and therefore in need of both therapy and training, they either leave the profession for something more appropriate, or they congregate around groups and leaders that require their fawning. Their pathologies, if not too severe, are sometimes considered a badge of honor and hopefully provide a secret knowledge and special empathy for patients that are one step behind them in therapy.

Whether you want to call it a "comfort zone" that protects against the anxiety of growth, or the Default Mode Network, "teleologically considered, the symptoms of illness serve the purpose of satisfying, in a relatively harmless manner, those wishes that are in conflict with the conscious ego, of localizing them to the symptoms, and thereby preventing them from injuring the rest of life...Driven by their instinctual tendencies perpetually to injure themselves in life, [analysands] do not fall ill of a neurosis simply because, by means of their apparently senseless self-injuries, they replace the symbolic overcompensations (self -punishments) of the obsessional neurotic by real ones, and in this way keep their oversensitive consciences clear." The consequences for Alexander in one case study was self-sabotage in a patient's failing business while not being able to earn as much money as he did before in the employment he got afterwards. Finding easier employment may reduce anxiety, but it can also be a regression. What I like about Alexander is how he connects libido to money. Even saving money can be a way of delaying cravings for later consumption. Investing is a way of giving people access to their cravings for either their business spending or current consumption. The saver is delaying gratification so they can earn investment income and have a greater consumption in the future. On the other hand, if things are really financially bad you can be too poor, castrated, and turned off to have intimate relationships and the mental health results are even worse if a patient can't find a suitable sublimation. If it gets to rock bottom, then any money that is received goes into an addiction that further prevents gainful employment and there is a possibility of a vicious cycle of homelessness. In less extremes, people find themselves in divorces and they have to downgrade their expectations and find genital relief with less desirable partners while earning a less desirable wage.

Two Days, One Night Official Trailer - Dr. Lorri Sulpizio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb3zBq6gVRk

For those who want to control their mind more, the way to transform libido, or cravings, into sublimation, is to have different cravings, just like how the sense of self is manipulated by advertisers. There's an "I" in the future that is savoring, and it's working when you can FEEL craving to do that particular activity. If the sublimation is strong, the activity is so interesting that you are not thinking about intimate relationships.

Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 6: https://rumble.com/v3mc0jy-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-6.html

If you eventually get courageous and try to move out of the comfort zone you can feel out the blockage. "We know that anxiety is one of the primary affects. 'I have said that transformation into anxiety—it would be better to say discharge in the form of anxiety—is the immediate vicissitude of libido which is subjected to repression.' In thus reacting with anxiety the ego repeats the affect which at birth became the prototype—of all anxiety and employs it as 'the universally current coinage for which any affective impulse is or can be exchanged.' The discovery of how the ego tries in the different neuroses to shield itself from the development of anxiety led Freud to conclude that 'It would thus seem not to be wrong in an abstract sense to assert that in general, symptoms are only formed to escape an otherwise unavoidable generating of anxiety." Anxiety of course can go unconscious, when repression is successful. If it's not successful there is visible anxiety. When it's unconscious, it's ready and waiting to produce anxiety but the analysand is outside of the challenging environment and can find another activity that is accessible for sublimation. Then when the patient goes again closer to the repressing situation, anxiety begins to return, like how people behave in a phobia. Psychoanalysts also feel that some patients are better at sublimating than others, for example, some are more creative, have more interesting hobbies, and can maintain well-being. This may be due to a good enough upbringing so that there's enough of a self to play with the environment to prevent feeling always empty inside emotionally. "If we equate the capacity to employ superfluous libido [craving] in a cathexis [emotional investment] of ego-tendencies with the capacity to sublimate, we may probably assume that the person who remains healthy succeeds in doing so on account of his greater capacity for sublimating at a very early stage of his ego-development." This means that some who are not inhibited will be in a healthy intimate relationship, in a job they like, or are good at, and any variations outside of that will be progressively worse outcomes, but some of those outcomes will be healthy because the analysand has vigorous activities they engage in, but those who cannot get into an intimate relationship or sublimate with skill, they will have the worst outcome for loneliness and depression.

Intimidation has also an element of control because it can be used to dominate an environment. Transference from a passive target can then anticipate castrations and avoid adventurism towards libido satisfactions precisely to avoid any other people who radiate the same power to punish. For example, a parent could bully a child and then that child becomes a prime target for future bullies because they continuously send the signal of passivity. "We know that the Oedipus complex brings repression into play with quite peculiar force and at the same time liberates the dread of castration. We may probably also assume that this great 'wave' of anxiety 'is reinforced by anxiety already existing (possibly only as a potential disposition) in consequence of earlier repressions—this latter anxiety may have operated directly as castration-anxiety originating in the 'primal castrations.'"

These castrations can lead to inauthentic desires where what you would like to pursue anticipates punishment and the area of choices provided by society where there are no punishments become the limited choices where one finds replacement satisfactions. This can be good when dealing with criminality, but it becomes a dystopian tyrannical society when rewards are being stripped from the populace to coalesce around a predator. Eventually success, or rewards, can be associated with punishment leading to the inhibitions just stated, which can be a block to self-development and move it into other areas based on self-preservation. Doing things only as a means to an end. A transfer from sexual instincts to self-preservation instincts. "The pleasure-principle allows us to compare two otherwise quite different objects on the basis of a similitude of pleasurable tone, or of interests. But we are probably justified in assuming that on the other hand these objects and activities, not in themselves sources of pleasure, become so through this identification, a sexual pleasure being displaced onto them. Then, when repression begins to operate and the step from identification to symbol-formation is taken, symbol-formation, [for example] libidinal phantasies becoming fixated in sexual-symbolic fashion upon particular objects, activities and interests, it is [symbol-formation] which affords an opportunity for libido to be displaced on to other objects and activities of the self-preservative instincts, not originally possessing a pleasurable tone. Here we arrive at the mechanism of sublimation..." For example, if a person has trouble with sexual symbolism, then connecting with a feeling of satisfaction after eating can be used for finishing projects or tasks. You need to find feelings of love or savoring to connect to the project, which would more normally be seeing oneself, identifying, and imagining savoring a benefit related to finishing that task or project. What's the meaning? What's the benefit? What's the payoff? What is the wish that would be enjoyable to fulfill? What is beautiful? What is precious, cute, endearing or treasured? What should be preserved for the future? In a way, Melanie was studying authenticity in activities and relationships so that those children would be luckier than she was.

The Pleasure Principle - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gurqv-the-pleasure-principle-sigmund-freud.html

Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 1: https://rumble.com/v1gvsvj-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-1.html

By 1924, it was clear the marriage wasn't working for the Kleins'. At that time Melanie moved to Berlin and there ensued a custody battle. "There is a widespread belief that Arthur Klein disappeared into Sweden, never to return. In actual fact he continued to live in the Dahlem house until 1937, when he moved to Switzerland, where he died in 1939. He remarried not long after the divorce ('disastrously,' according to Eric Clyne, since he was again divorced within a few years), and there was a daughter by the marriage. According to his son, Arthur Klein was subsequently looked after by a series of housekeepers."

Melanie Klein Trust: https://melanie-klein-trust.org.uk/

Love, Guilt and Reparation: And Works 1921-1945 (The Writings of Melanie Klein, Volume 1) by Melanie Klein: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780743237659/

The New Dictionary of Kleinian Thought by Elizabeth Bott Spillius, Jane E. Milton, Penelope Garvey, Cyril Couve, Deborah Steiner: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780415592598/

Melanie Klein by Penelope Garvey: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781032105246/

Melanie Klein: Her World and Her Work by Phyllis Grosskurth: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781568214450/

Analyst of the Imagination by Jenny Pearson: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781855759046/

The War Inside by Michal Shapira: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781107035133/

Hernandez-Halton I. Klein, Ferenczi and the clinical diary. Am J Psychoanal. 2015 Mar;75(1):76-85.

Psychology: http://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/

#abreaction #catharsis #child psychology #divorce #education #femininity #franz alexander #karl abraham #masculinity #melanie klein #object relations #oedipus complex #pedagogy #playpsychology #psychoanalysis #repression #sandor ferenczi #sublimation #teaching

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