Melanie Klein

Melanie Klein was a psychoanalyst who developed a theory of early emotional life centered on relationships with internalized objects and pioneered play-based analysis of children.

Unconscious fantasy: An unconscious mental activity that gives instinctual wishes and anxieties a representational form. Klein treated such fantasies as active from the earliest stages of psychic life.
Paranoid-schizoid position: An early mode of psychic organization marked by splitting, persecution anxiety, and relations to part-objects. Klein used this position to describe the infant’s earliest way of managing anxiety.
Anna Freud: An Austrian-British psychoanalyst who developed ego psychology and child psychoanalysis. Her disagreement with Klein over child analysis defined a major debate in British psychoanalysis.
Play therapy: A form of psychotherapy that uses play as a medium for expression and therapeutic work. Klein treated children’s play as a route to material otherwise explored through adult free association.
British Psychoanalytical Society: A professional organization for psychoanalysts in the United Kingdom, founded in 1913. Klein’s disputes with Anna Freud shaped the society’s Controversial Discussions during the 1940s.
Internal object: A mental representation of another person, experienced as part of one’s inner world. Klein used internalized figures to explain how early relationships shape the mind.
Depressive position: A mode of psychic organization in which loved and hated aspects of the same person are recognized together. Its emergence brings concern about damage to loved objects and motivates reparation.
Sigmund Freud: An Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis and developed theories of the unconscious and psychosexual development. Klein adapted Freud’s psychoanalytic framework while placing greater emphasis on infancy.
Child psychoanalysis: The psychoanalytic treatment of children, using methods suited to their development and communication. Klein helped establish intensive psychoanalytic treatment as a method for working with children.
Controversial Discussions: A series of debates within the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1941 to 1945 over psychoanalytic theory and training. These debates addressed Klein’s theories and led to institutional arrangements accommodating competing groups.

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