Lectures on Technique by Melanie Klein

Edited with Critical Review by John Steiner

Melanie Klein, John Steiner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317379300
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Psychanalyse

Lectures on Technique by Melanie Klein is based on a series of six lectures given by Melanie Klein to students at the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1936 and repeated several times in subsequent years. They were discovered in the Melanie Klein Archives housed in the Wellcome Medical Library and have been previously described by Elizabeth Spillius but never before published. In this book, John Steiner explores what characterises Kleinian Technique, how her technique changed over the years, what she saw as the correct psychoanalytical attitude and how psychoanalytic technique has changed since Klein's death.

Melanie Klein, who moved to England from Berlin in 1927, became one of the leading psychoanalysts, following Freud and making an important contribution in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. A pioneer in child analysis, her work remains widely influential throughout the world. This book consists of the full text of the original six lectures, accompanied by a critical analysis from John Steiner who is known internationally as a leading Kleinian analyst and writer. Steiner demonstrates the importance of the lectures in understanding Klein's work and their continued relevance for contemporary psychoanalysis. In addition, also published for the first time, this book includes annotated transcripts of a preserved recording of a seminar Klein held in 1958 with young analysts of the British Psychoanalytical Society. In this seminar, close to the end of her life, many of the points made in the earlier lectures were elaborated upon and brought further up to date in light of developments in Klein's thinking during the intervening years.

Featuring rare, previously unpublished material, Lectures on Technique by Melanie Klein provides a new and significant contribution to understanding of the Kleinian paradigm. It will be essential reading for all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists interested in and influenced by Klein's work and legacy.

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Part 1

INTRODUCTION, OUTLINE AND CRITICAL REVIEW OF KLEIN’S LECTURES AND SEMINARS ON TECHNIQUE

What characterises Kleinian technique? This question is regularly asked by analytic colleagues, by members of the general public, and also by prospective patients who have often been unclear about the differences between the various schools of psychoanalysis. The interested reader can turn to accounts by Klein’s followers such as those by Hanna Segal (1964, 1967) and Elizabeth Spillius (2004, 2007) or to accounts by sympathetic observers from the outside, such as Roy Schafer (1994, 1997), but until now it has not been possible to read what Klein herself had to say about her technique with adult patients.

Klein wrote about her technique of child analysis (Klein, 1932, 1955) but no systematic account of her technique with adults has appeared until these lectures, which are published here in full for the first time. There is evidence in the archive that she was planning to write a book on technique and it seems likely that she was collecting ideas and clinical material but did not get around to completing this task (Spillius, 2007, p. 67). Klein first gave the six lectures to candidates of the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1936 and they are clearly of historical interest as evidence of her work at that time. However, their value is much more than this because they come across as entirely modern and most of what they say is of relevance to the contemporary reader. Some of her ideas, such as the importance of the analysis of transference, have become central to present-day analytic technique while others, for example, on counter-transference and on making links to the past, remain controversial.

Also published for the first time in the present volume is an edited transcript of some seminars that Klein held in 1958 with young analysts of the British Society, two years before her death. These offer something of a contrast to the lectures. They allow us to glimpse Klein’s later approach to technique and to see to what extent her views had changed in the intervening period. They also provide an interesting insight into the preoccupations of the seminar members at that time, especially in the pressure they put on Klein to clarify her views on counter-transference.

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To help the reader orient himself to the lectures and to the seminars, the present chapter describes how they were discovered in the Melanie Klein Archive and proceeds with a survey and critical review, in which I hope to be able to convey the fascination and excitement that these remarkable lectures can evoke.

At the time when the lectures were given in 1936, Klein had built up a reputation as a pioneer of child analysis but was also working extensively with adults. Having originally adapted Freud’s method with adults for work with children she now began to adapt her technique with children for work with adults. Because her ideas are so closely related to her early technique with children, I will briefly describe the development of her play technique before proceeding to discuss the lectures. I will conclude by examining two contemporary controversies in the light of Klein’s approach to technique: first, the issue of what use can be made of the analyst’s counter-transference and, second, the question of how much to concentrate our attention on the here and now of the session and how much to make links to the patient’s early history and unconscious phantasy.

Discovering the lectures: Elizabeth Spillius in the archive

The existence of the Melanie Klein Archive in the Wellcome Library had been known for some years but no research had been done until Professor Heinz Weiss, at that time of the Julius-Maximillian University of Würzburg, became aware of them while he was working at the Tavistock Clinic in 1992. Klein had given a paper about ‘Erna’ at the first German Conference of Psychoanalysis in Würzburg in 1924 and Weiss discovered the original manuscript in the Archive. He presented this manuscript as well as other material including part of her autobiography at the conference commemorating the 70th anniversary of the event in Würzburg in 1994. Weiss invited Claudia Frank to join him in exploring the archive and she did a great deal of research, which led to important publications about Klein’s work in Berlin (Frank and Weiss, 1996; Frank, 2009). In the course of her research Frank came across the Lectures on Technique, and she translated and published a paper in German based on Lecture 1, which chiefly concerned Klein’s thoughts on the Psychoanalytic Attitude (Frank, 2004). She enthusiastically showed them to Elizabeth Spillius who became interested in the archive and further work on them is chiefly due to her. Spillius became the honorary Archivist of the Trust and did more than anyone else to make the contents of the Archive known to the English reader, beginning with her paper presented to the British Psychoanalytical Society in 2004 (Spillius, 2004).¹

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The Melanie Klein Archive is made up of the notes and papers that Klein bequeathed to the Melanie Klein Trust in her will in 1960 and which were given to the Wellcome Medical Library for safe keeping in 1984. The Archive consists of 29 boxes, each containing 800 to 1,000 pages of papers, some in German, some in English, some handwritten, some typed. The papers had already been catalogued by the Trust in 1961 and this catalogue was used as a guideline by Dr Lesley Hall, Senior Assistant Archivist at the Wellcome Library, who corrected certain anomalies and added further material when it was donated. There are 12 boxes of clinical notes and nine boxes of lectures and notes about psychoanalytic technique and theory. So, it is clear that Klein, unlike Freud, thought that her unpublished notes were worth preserving. Most of the clinical notes stop in about 1950. Her notes on theory and technique appear to continue until the late 1950s, although it is difficult to be sure of this because most of them are undated. However, there is one set of notes on projective identification, which, unusually for Klein, is given a date of 1958. The material is classified into six sections: A. Personal and biographical; B. Case material, child and adult; C. Manuscripts; D. Notes; E. The controversial discussions within the British Psychoanalytical Society; and F. Family papers (Spillius, 2007, pp. 65–66).

After her talk to the British Psychoanalytical Society in 2004 Elizabeth Spillius gave me photocopies of the lectures to read and perusing these confirmed that the work was of such importance that it ought to be published in full. Later, when she told me about the seminars and gave me a transcript it seemed clear that these were also of great interest and that they complement the material in the lectures. Spillius spent many years devoted to the study of the Melanie Klein Archive. She uncovered much original material in addition to the lectures and the seminars, including copious clinical and technical notes. An account of this work appears in her book Encounters with Klein (2007), comprising the section of the book entitled ‘In Klein’s Archive’. Her original talk to the British Psychoanalytical Society appears as Chapter 3, ‘Melanie Klein Revisited: Her Unpublished Thoughts on Technique’, and two further chapters, ‘Melanie Klein on the Past’ (Chapter 4), and ‘Projective Identification: Back to the Future’ (Chapter 5), complete her account. These chapters provide an important source of material from the archive and give an indication of what rich pickings remain to be studied there. Elizabeth Spillius’s comments and extracts from material she found in Klein’s Notes on Technique are particularly illuminating. There were, in fact, over 1,500 pages of notes specifically devoted to technical problems. These could only be briefly touched on by Spillius and could not be included in the present book. However, later in this review I will discuss some of the material from the notes and give one or two extracts from Spillius’s summaries.

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Origins in the play technique with children

Fortunately, some excellent accounts of Klein’s play technique with children are available (Klein, 1932, 1955; Frank, 2009). From the start Klein hoped to apply the basic techniques that Freud had developed with adults and she began by offering her child patients a couch and asking for associations (Frank, 2009). Quite quickly, however, she found it more natural and more effective to play with the children using some simple toys. She interpreted the anxieties and unconscious phantasies behind these games just as Freud had interpreted his patients’ dreams and associations. At first, she focussed on Oedipal phantasies and avoided the negative transference as her contemporaries did, but gradually she found that, contrary to expectations, situations that made the child anxious did not need to be avoided. Indeed, she found that anxiety was relieved if she interpreted her patients’ fears and linked them to their aggressive impulses. Moreover, as negative feelings were worked through, her patients’ confidence in her work was enhanced. With the relief of anxiety came a relaxation of inhibitions and a freeing up of play and associations so that the children were able to explore new areas of unconscious phantasy previously blocked by anxiety and suspicion.

A major theme that Klein explored in this early work was the way that, in her child patients, aggressive attacks on the analyst regularly led to fears of retaliation and persecution. These observations encouraged her interest in the early super-ego, which she found was often harsh and frightening and which she was able to trace to phantasied attacks on the mother’s body. Her experience was that relief was ultimately only possible if the attacks were recognised and the guilt they gave rise to was faced and worked through. Furthermore she found that when her patients became aware of their aggression, their guilt could be worked through and this released a wish to make reparation, which in turn modified the severity of the super-ego.

Such modification of the super-ego remained important in Klein’s work with adults, as did other themes already adumbrated in her work with children, including the centrality of transference and the idea that one can reduce anxiety through interpretation at the point of maximum urgency.

Overview and discussion of Klein’s lectures on technique

The psychoanalytic attitude

Klein opens her lectures with a discussion of the psychoanalytic attitude which is so basic to her clinical approach that it seems to me to represent something like a manifesto of what she considered to be fundamental. It is a bold statement not just of attitudes but of qualities she believed the analyst must espouse in order to function. The analytic setting gives us a unique opportunity to study and understand another person and she never loses sight of this as our primary task.

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One main point about it is that our whole interest is focused on one aim, namely, on the exploration of the mind of this one person who for the time being has become the centre of our attention. Correspondingly everything else, including our own personal feelings, has temporarily lost importance.

(This volume, p. 29)

Moreover she goes on to suggest that:

If the urge to explore is coupled with an unfailing desire to ascertain the truth, no matter what this may be, and anxiety does not interfere too much with it, we should be able to note undisturbed what the patient’s mind presents to us, irrespective even of the ultimate purpose of our work, namely, the cure of the patient.

If we are not bent on labelling our patients as such and such a type, or wondering prematurely about the structure of the case, if we are not guided in our approach to him by an preconceived plan, trying to evoke such and such a response from him, then, and only then, are we ready to learn step by step everything about the patient from himself. But then we are also in the best position to take nothing for granted and to rediscover or revise whatever analysis has taught us before.

This rather curious state of mind, eager and at the same time patient, detached from its subject and at the same time fully absorbed in it, is clearly the result of a balance between different and partly conflicting tendencies and psychological drives, and of a good co-operation between several different parts of our mind. For while we are ready to take in as something new what the patient’s mind presents to us and to respond freely to it, our knowledge and our experience are by no means put out of action. Our critical faculties undoubtedly remain active all along, but they have as it were, retreated into the background to leave the way free for our unconscious to get into touch with the unconscious of the patient.

(This volume, p. 30)

Perhaps recognising that this searching for truth might sound cold and scientific she goes on to correct this view.

For if I had given you so far the impression that the analytic attitude is devoid of feelings and somehow mechanical, then I should hasten to correct this impression. The analyst is only capable of approaching and understanding his patient as a human being if his own emotions and human feelings are fully active, though they are kept well under control. If the analyst sets out to explore the mind of his patient as if it were an interesting and complicated piece of machinery he will not, however strong and sincere be his desire to find out the truth, do fruitful analytic work. This fundamental desire will only be effective if it is coupled with a really good attitude towards the patient as a person. By this I do not mean merely friendly human feelings and a benevolent attitude towards people, but in addition to this, something of the nature of a deep and true respect for the workings of the human mind and the human personality in general.

(This volume, p. 30)

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Of course she recognises that we cannot avoid having personal feelings, and in the seminars in 1958 she discusses how disturbing the patient’s projections can be, but she argued that they interfere with our work if we give them too important a place. In contrast to Bion’s statements on memory and desire (1970), Klein thinks that, while it is important to keep counter-transference under control and, for example, not care too much for our patients, that it is natural that we should want to help our patients as well as to understand them. Intellectual interests have to be balanced with emotional needs and we have to remember that we, and the patient, face a situation where we cannot avoid being human.

The section on attitude ends with a discussion of what Klein singles out as a particularly serious obstacle to the analytic attitude, namely the development of ‘feelings of power and superiority’. Here I find it interesting that she does not discuss unconscious conflicts the analyst might have, say over sadistic impulses or a wish to dominate. Rather she addresses the importance of a sense of reality that can support more modest aims as we realise how difficult it is to do good analytic work and indeed how difficult it is to understand another human being.

This humble and at the same time confident spirit serves as the best safeguard against feelings of power and superiority, and against any tendencies to seek rapid or magical results, such as attempting to make our patient as we should like him to be, or getting an easy satisfaction by impressing the patient or by getting the better of him, or pacifying him, or even giving way to him, and so on, all of which tendencies are bound to lead the work into wrong directions.

(This volume, p. 31)

Klein is aware that a good psychoanalytic attitude is difficult to sustain and that there are always pressures on the analyst to divert him from it, for example to reassure the patient or to reassure himself in various ways. However she believes that even quite persecuted patients, who may initially try to divert the analyst from an analytic attitude, can recognise and value the analyst’s ability to resist this pressure.

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Recognising what is felt to be a proper analytic attitude means that we resist those influences that pull us away to what we would today consider to be enactments. Of course, we only gradually and imperfectly become aware of unconscious forces working on us but if our goals are clear we can more easily recognise when we deviate from them. Klein’s approac...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Lectures on Technique by Melanie Klein
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Michael Feldman
• Acknowledgements
• Part 1 Introduction, Outline and Critical Review of Klein’s Lectures and Seminars on Technique
• Part 2 The Lectures on Technique, 1936
• Part 3 The Seminars on Technique, 1958
• Appendix A List of Patients
• Appendix B Lecture 5 Verbatim from the Archive
• Bibliography
• Index