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Melanie Klein was a true pioneer of British psychoanalysis, though her contribution did not end there; it extended to historical thinking about war, violence, the self and the psyche of the child during the momentous events of the twentieth century. This chapter analyses Klein’s contribution and her extensive 1938 clinical archive of the dreams and thoughts of her British patients vis-à-vis the Nazis, Hitler and the Second World War as it loomed on the horizon. In particular, the chapter will interrogate and analyse her patients’ different reactions to both
Recent killings of unarmed black citizens are a fresh reminder of the troubled state of racial integration in the United States. At the same time, the unfolding Black Lives Matter protest movements and the responses by federal agencies each testify to a not insignificant capacity for addressing social pathologies surrounding the color line. In order to respond to this ambivalent situation, this article suggests a pairing between the work of James Baldwin and that of the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. I will argue that we cannot fully appreciate the depths of what Baldwin called the “savage paradox” of race without the insights provided by Klein and object relations psychoanalysis. Conversely, Baldwin helps us to sound out the political significance of object relations approaches, including the work of Klein and those influenced by her such as Hanna Segal and Wilfred Bion. In conversation with the work of Baldwin, object relations theory can help to identify particular social settings and institutions that might allow concrete efforts toward racial justice to take root.
Not only did Sigmund Freud know literature intimately, and quote liberally from literatures of several languages, he has also inspired twentieth-century writers and philosophers, and created several schools of criticism, in literary and cultural studies. Freud was not just practising psychotherapy on his patients, helping them in difficult situations, but helping them by studying the unconscious as the basis of their problems. This book deals with Freud and psychoanalysis, and begins by analysing the 'Copernican revolution' which meant that psychoanalysis decentres the conscious mind, the ego. It shows how Freud illuminates literature, as Freud needs attention for what he says about literature. The book presents one of Freud's 'case-histories', where he discussed particular examples of analysis by examining obsessional neurosis, as distinct from hysteria. It analyses Freud on memory, in relation to consciousness, repression and the unconscious. Guilt was one of his central topics of his work, and the book explores it through several critical texts, 'Criminals from a Sense of Guilt', and 'The Ego and the Id'. The book discusses Melanie Klein, a follower of Freud, and object-relations theory, while also making a reference to Julia Kristeva. One of the main strands of thought of Jacques Lacan was the categories of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real, as well as paranoia and madness, which are linked to literature here. The book finally returns to Freud on hysteria, and examines him on paranoia in Daniel Paul Schreber, and the psychosis of the 'Wolf Man'.
, Lovelace’s behaviour is dominated by his desire to have Clarissa forgive him, and for a while it looks as if his inability to speak, write, think or transcribe effectively will stay with him for as long as she refuses to do so. In this respect – or so I want to show – the language, logic and metaphors of Richardson’s representation of Lovelace after the rape have a surprising amount in common with the work of Melanie Klein and the British ‘object relations’ school of psychoanalysis. Turning to Klein in the third section of the chapter, I consider the possibility that
of Freud’s most exciting followers, Melanie Klein (1882–1960), and object-relations theory; here also I make reference to Julia Kristeva; this chapter has most to say about the role of the mother in psychoanalysis. But there is plenty of Freud in this chapter, too, most notably his discussion of the Fort! Da! game in Beyond the Pleasure Principle . Chapters 6 and 7 discuss Jacques Lacan (1901
psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. First, I describe Klein’s work as it relates to the role of relationships and the good in the development of subjectivity. Next, I discuss the degree to which Klein’s work can be thought about in relation to the state, and how far it helps an understanding of state subjectivity. Finally, I attempt to link her ideas to those of the communi tarians, in particular in thinking about the nature of relationships within and between communities, and the degree to which they depend on each other. As a whole, the discussion aims to more fully realise the
the mother in literature; and psychoanalysis, especially that deriving from Melanie Klein (1882–1960), has responded to that. Her work provides the substance of this chapter. Wordsworth writes in an almost incantatory style. He repeats ‘blest’ and ‘nursed’ and ‘mother’ from line to line, speaking of the mother’s arms, breast, and eye, while rhyming ‘sinks’ and
When I started a PhD on the films of Ingmar Bergman in 2003, I had to select a methodology. I became interested in the theoretical work of Melanie Klein and her followers, not because this theory did away with the complexity of the films, but because of the shared themes and concerns. In particular, there is the shared focus on a bleak view of human nature, coupled with an exploration of the individual’s inner world, and ultimately the possibility of an affirmative path based on the release and
countryside. 5 In London, according to official figures, half the entire school population was evacuated. 6 Susan Isaacs, Lucy Fildes and John Bowlby, a young medically trained psychologist who had studied with most major figures in English psychology and psychoanalysis at the time, including Melanie Klein and Cyril Burt, were amongst a growing group of psychologists and
created at a certain point in one’s development – that it is not something that one is born with, so to speak, but is made as a result of certain life experiences. It is also clear that the unconscious is created and indeed populated at an early age. If our unconscious is us, what or who we are just inasmuch as we do not know what or who we are, it, the unconscious, is us as children, ourselves as ghosts of the past. Melanie Klein and Jean Laplanche have written powerfully on the idea that ignorance is also the basis of human (mis