Melanie Klein

by Kristeva, Julia; Guberman, Ross

• ISBN13: 9780231122856
• ISBN10: 0231122853
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-12-31
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

To the renowned psychoanalyst, philosopher, and linguist Julia Kristeva, Melanie Klein (1882--1960) was the most original innovator, male or female, in the psychoanalytic arena. Klein pioneered psychoanalytic practice with children and made major contributions to our understanding of both psychosis and autism. Along the way, she successfully introduced a new approach to the theory of the unconscious without abandoning the principles set forth by Freud. In her first biography of a fellow psychoanalyst, the prolific Kristeva considers Klein's life and intellectual development, weaving a narrative that covers the history of psychoanalysis and illuminates Kristeva's own life and work. Kristeva tells the remarkable story of Klein's life: an unhappy wife and mother who underwent analysis, and -- without a medical or other advanced degree -- became an analyst herself at the age of 40. In examining her work, Kristeva proposes that Klein's "break" with Freud was really an attempt to complete his theory of the unconscious. Kristeva addresses Klein's numerous critics, and, in doing so, bridges the wide gulf between the clinical and theoretical worlds of psychoanalysis. Klein is celebrated here as the first person to see the mother as the source of not only creativity, but of thought itself, and the first to consider the place of matricide in psychic development. As such, Klein is a seminal figure in the evolution of the provocative ideas about motherhood and the psyche for which Kristeva is most famous. Klein is thus, in a sense, a mother to Kristeva, making this book an account of the development of Kristeva's own thought as well as Klein's.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Psychoanalytic Century	5	(12)
Jewish Families, European Stories: A Depression and its Aftermath	17	(18)
Libussa	17	(4)
Jews and Catholics	21	(3)
Sandor Ferenczi	24	(3)
Karl Abraham	27	(3)
London	30	(5)
Analyzing Her Children: From Scandal to Play Technique	35	(22)
The Unconscious Knowledge (of the Child) Versus the Enlightenment (of the Parents)	38	(2)
Inventing Stories with Erich/Fritz	40	(5)
Hans and (Perhaps) Melitta	45	(3)
Playing? Interpreting	48	(3)
Plain Words, Negative Transference, and Decondensation of the Phantasy	51	(6)
The Priority and Interiority of the Other and the Bond: The Baby is Born with His Objects	57	(25)
Narcissism and the Object	57	(4)
Inside/Outside	61	(5)
The ``Paranoid-Schizoid Position'': Splitting and Projective Identification	66	(7)
The Depressive Position: The Whole Object, the Psychic Realm, and Reparation	73	(9)
Anxiety or Desire: In the Beginning was the Death Drive	82	(16)
Eros Absorbed into Thanatos: Sadistic Devouring and the Anal Attack	82	(7)
The Grief that Affords Us a Soul	89	(2)
The Power of Envy and a Wager on Gratitude	91	(3)
Petits Fours, kleine Frou, Frau Klein	94	(4)
A Most Early and Tyrannical Superego	98	(16)
From the Earliest Stages of the Oedipus Conflict	98	(3)
Neither Boys nor Girls Can Avoid It	101	(1)
Persecuting Idealizations and ``Concretizations''	102	(2)
The Case of Richard: Goodness Versus Hitler-Ubu	104	(7)
How Can We Avoid Being Alone?	111	(3)
The Cult of the Mother or an Ode to Matricide? The Parents	114	(23)
The Perpetually Renewed Breast	114	(4)
A Primary Feminine Phase	118	(3)
Female Sexuality	121	(5)
. . .and Male Sexuality	126	(2)
The ``Combined'' or Coupled Parents	128	(4)
An Oresteia	132	(5)
The Phantasy as a Metaphor Incarnate	137	(21)
The Representative Before Representation	137	(7)
``Prenarrative Envelopes'' Between Anxiety and Language	144	(6)
Do Women Have an Affinity for the Archaic?	150	(8)
The Immanence of Symbolism and its Degrees	158	(34)
From Equations to Symbols: Dick	158	(11)
Klein on Negativity	169	(8)
The Post-Kleinian Approach to the Archaic and the Primary	177	(9)
Cultural Acts of Sublimation: Art and Literature	186	(6)
From the Foreign Language to the Filigree of the Loyal and Disloyal	192	(21)
A Founder Without a Text	192	(10)
Mother and Daughter	202	(5)
Peace and War Among the Ladies	207	(6)
The Politics of Kleinianism	213	(36)
From the Great Controversial Discussions to the Independents	213	(12)
Lacan's Envy and Gratitude	225	(5)
The Left and the Feminists Take Hold of the ``Inspired Gut Butcher''	230	(11)
The Inner Mother and the Depth of Thought	241	(8)
Notes	249	(28)
Bibliography	277	(8)
Index	285