Love, Guilt and Reparation

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This work shows the growth of Klein's work and ideas between 1921 and 1945. The earlier papers reveal her intense preoccupation with the impact of infant anxieties upon child development. She traces these influences on criminality and childhood psychosis, symbol formation and intellectual inhibition and the early development of conscience. In the final paper on the Oedipus complex, Klein develops her theories of the earliest stages of infant development, extending Freud's analysis of the Oedipus complex and laying a basis for her own subsequent conceptualizing of the paranoid-schizoid position in the first six months of life.

Reviews

"Klein's ideas about children, along with her many innovations in adult therapy, placed her in the top ranks of a group of 20th-century psychoanalysts who pioneered the study of early childhood psychology" Boston Globe "[A] seminal psychoanalytic thinker" New York Times

Author Bio

Melanie Klein was born in Vienna in 1882. At about fourteen she decided to study medicine. With her brother's help she learned enough Greek and Latin to pass into the Gymnasium. But her early engagement and subsequent marriage in 1903 brought a halt to her plans. Years later, discovering a booklet on dreams by Freud, she turned her attention to psychoanalysis. At this time she was living in Budapest and began her own analysis with Ferenczi, who encouraged her interest in the analysis of children. In 1921 she moved to Berlin to continue her work with children, supported by Dr Karl Abraham. In 1926 she moved to London where she worked and lived until her death in 1960.