Table Of ContentLECTURES ON TECHNIQUE BY
MELANIE KLEIN
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Featuring rare, previously unpublished material, Lectures on Technique by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.
John Steiner is a training analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society who
is retired from his analytic practice but continues to supervise candidates, to
conduct seminars and to write. He is the author of several psychoanalytic papers
and two books: Psychic Retreats (1993) and Seeing and Being Seen (2011), both
by Routledge. He has also edited and written introductions to The Oedipus
Complex Today (1989), to Hanna Segal’s Psychoanalysis, Literature and War (1997)
and to Rosenfeld in Retrospect (2008).
LECTURES ON
TECHNIQUE BY
MELANIE KLEIN
Edited with Critical Review by John Steiner
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2017 selection and editorial matter, John Steiner; original work,
Melanie Klein
The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the author for their original work,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Klein, Melanie, author. | Steiner, John, 1934- editor.
Title: Lectures on technique by Melanie Klein : edited with critical
review by John Steiner / John Steiner.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series: NLP teaching
series | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016033808| ISBN 9781138940093
(hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781138940109
(pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315674483 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychoanalysis. | Klein, Melanie.
Classification: LCC BF173 .K4824 2017 | DDC 150.19/5—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016033808
ISBN: 978-1-138-94009-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-94010-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-67448-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
To Elizabeth Spillius (1924–2016)
CONTENTS
Foreword by Michael Feldman viii
Acknowledgements ix
PART I
Introduction, outline and critical review of Klein’s lectures and
seminars on technique 1
PART 2
The lectures on technique, 1936 25
Introduction 25
Lecture 1: Guiding principles 29
Lecture 2: Aspects of the transference situation 42
Lecture 3: Transference and interpretation 51
Lecture 4: Clinical illustration of transference and interpretation 61
Lecture 5: Experiences and phantasy 71
Lecture 6: The analysis of grievances 80
PART 3
The seminars on technique, 1958 95
Appendix A List of patients 118
Appendix B Lecture 5 verbatim from the Archive 120
Bibliography 129
Index 133
FOREWORD
Klein’s lectures, delivered in 1936, are published here for the first time. They
provide a fascinating insight into Klein’s views on psychoanalytic technique
and theory. They are not only of historical interest, but remain relevant to the
issues contemporary psychoanalysts have to deal with in clinical practice. In this
lively and highly readable account Klein addresses questions about interpreting
what is going on in the ‘here and now’ of the sessions and how this relates
to the patient’s account of his history. She considers what weight one gives
to unconscious phantasy, and how the analyst understands the feelings and
thoughts that arise in his own mind, usually thought of as counter-transference:
and how these link with the thoughts induced in the analyst by the patient’s
phantasies, anxieties and behaviour.
She also elaborates and clarifies some important theoretical ideas, which,
despite their formulation in 1936, have a very modern ring and represent a new
and refreshing quality. Nowhere else is she as clear and explicit in formulating
her ideas, and the inclusion of detailed clinical material adds to the liveliness
and the clarification of her views.
This is a lively and informative book that the reader will benefit from
but also enjoy. Klein comes across as flexible and kind but also as tough and
uncompromising in her dedication to psychoanalytic research.
Michael Feldman
Chair, Melanie Klein Trust
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the Melanie Klein Trust for permission to publish the
lectures and the seminars and also for their generous moral and financial
support for the project. Liz Allison and Jane Milton, the current archivist to
the trust, gave invaluable help as did my wife, Deborah Steiner, who read and
commented on much of the material. Sisifa Spillius patiently deciphered and
corrected the transcripts of Klein’s seminars.
The Portrait of Melanie Klein by Olga Dormandi, born Székely-Kovács
(1900–1971), featured on the cover of this book, was probably painted in 1948.
It was photographed by Greg Bartley. I would like to thank Melanie Klein’s
grand-daughters Diana Brimblecombe and Hazel Bentall for permission to use
the portrait. (The artist was the older sister of Alice Balint who married the
psychoanalyst Michael Balint. She also painted a portrait of Sandor Ferenczi
www.artfinding.com/104979/Biography/Szekely-Kovacs-Olga.)
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
