Melanie Klein

Front Cover
Columbia University Press, 2001 - Biography & Autobiography - 296 pages
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.

 

Contents

JEWISH FAMILIES EUROPEAN STORIES
17
ANALYZING HER CHILDREN FROM
35
THE BABY IS BORN
57
ANXIETY OR DESIRE IN
82
A MOST EARLY AND TYRANNICAL SUPEREGO
98
THE CULT OF THE MOTHER OR
114
METAPHOR INCARNATE
137
THE IMMANENCE OF SYMBOLISM
158
FROM THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE TO
192
THE POLITICS OF KLEINIANISM
213
Notes
249
Bibliography
277
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About the author (2001)

Julia Kristeva is professor of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII and author of many acclaimed works and novels, including The Severed Head: Capital Visions, This Incredible Need to Believe, Hatred and Forgiveness, and Teresa, My Love: An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila, all published by Columbia. She is the recipient of the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought and the Holberg International Memorial Prize.