Table Of ContentMelanie Klein and Marcelle Spira:
Their Correspondence and Context
Melanie Klein and Marcelle Spira: Their Correspondence and Context includes
45 letters Melanie Klein wrote to the Swiss psychoanalyst Marcelle Spira between
1955 and 1960, as well as six rough drafts from Spira. They were discovered in
Spira’s library after her death in 2006. As only a few of the letters that Klein wrote
to her colleagues have been preserved, this moving, historically important
correspondence enlightens the last (cid:191) ve years of Klein’s creative life.
The common theme of the letters is their discussion of the French translation of
The Psycho-Analysis of Children by Boulanger in collaboration with Spira. The
translation, (cid:191) rst undertaken by Lacan, went through many ups and downs until it
was published in 1959 by the Presses Universitaires de France. Klein also
discusses her current work, in particular Envy and Gratitude (1957). She
encourages her pioneering Swiss colleague Spira to be patient in the face of the
resistance shown towards Kleinian thinking. Identifying herself to some extent
with her younger follower, Klein reveals a very touching autobiographical account
of the dif(cid:191) culties that she herself had encountered in her work and how she
overcame them.
In Melanie Klein and Marcelle Spira: Their Correspondence and Context,
Jean-Michel Quinodoz brings together these important letters. This rare collection
of their correspondence is a valuable contribution to the history of psychoanalysis
and will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, trainee psychoanalysts and lay
readers with an interest in the work of Klein and Spira.
Jean-Michel Quinodoz is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Geneva. He is a
member of the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society and a Distinguished Fellow of the
British Psychoanalytical Society. He is author of The Taming of Solitude
(Routledge, 1993), Dreams That Turn Over a Page (Routledge, 2002), Reading
Freud (Routledge, 2005) and Listening to Hanna Segal (Routledge, 2007).
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Melanie Klein and Marcelle
Spira: Their Correspondence
and Context
Jean-Michel Quinodoz
First published in France 2013
by Presses Universitaires de France
6, Avenue Reille, 75014 Paris
First published 2015
by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Jean-Michel Quinodoz
The right of Jean-Michel Quinodoz to be identi(cid:191) ed as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identi(cid:191) cation and explanation
without intent to infringe.
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
Klein, Melanie.
[Melanie Klein. English]
Melanie Klein and Marcelle Spira : their correspondence and context / [edited by] Jean-Michel
Quinodoz.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-415-85582-2 (hbk)
1. Klein, Melanie--Correspondence. 2. Spira, Marcelle, 1910-2006. 3. Psychoanalysis. 4. Women
psychoanalysts. I. Quinodoz, Jean-Michel. II. Title.
BF109.K57A413 2014
150.19’5092--dc23
2014008556
ISBN: 978-0-415-85582-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-75663-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Times
by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby
To Danielle
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Contents
Foreword viii
Ronald Britton
Acknowledgements and permissions xi
1 The unpublished letters of Melanie Klein 1
2 Melanie Klein, Marcelle Spira, Raymond de Saussure and
the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society 6
3 From Lacan to Boulanger: It took ten years to translate
The Psycho-Analysis of Children into French 15
4 Many common threads can be followed in parallel 20
5 Transcription of the 45 letters that Melanie Klein sent to
Marcelle Spira 44
6 Six draft copies of letters from Marcelle Spira to Melanie
Klein 106
7 Facsimiles 118
Bibliography 125
Name index 128
Index of Melanie Klein’s letters 131
Index of Marcelle Spira’s initial drafts 132
Foreword
Ronald Britton
Though this book is presented with characteristic modesty by Jean-Michel
Quinodoz, it is invaluable for those with an interest in the history of psychoanalysis
and doubly so for those who have been informed and inspired by the work of
Melanie Klein. We have to thank him not only for unearthing and publishing this
cache of illuminating correspondence, but also for contextualizing it so very
well. His introduction identi(cid:191) es who people are, how they are signi(cid:191) cant and
what was taking place in the world of psychoanalysis at such an interesting and
creative time.
This correspondence between Melanie Klein in the last decade of her life in
London and Marcelle Spira, a young woman determinedly pioneering a Kleinian
analytic approach in Switzerland, is moving, enlightening and historically
important.
At the time of this correspondence Klein was well established in the British
Psychoanalytical Society with a group of distinguished followers and adherents
throughout the world. She had however many opponents both at home and abroad.
Though her analytic experience and education had been in Budapest, it was in
Berlin in the 1920s that her groundbreaking development of child analysis began.
It not only started a new chapter in the understanding of child development, it also
changed the analysis of adults and enlarged the patient group with whom it was
possible to work to include borderline and psychotic patients. When Marcelle
Spira trained in Argentina, there was a group there who espoused Klein’s work,
which included Spira’s analyst Marie Langer, Enrique and Arminda Pichon-
Rivière, Willy and Madeleine Baranger and Heinrich Racker. Spira was taken
aback when she returned to her home country, to (cid:191) nd that Klein’s in(cid:192) uence had
not reached Switzerland.
Marcelle Spira was in her forties, much the same age as Klein was when she
produced her highly original, controversial work in the 1920s, (cid:191) rst in Berlin and
then London. This, I feel, facilitated Melanie Klein’s identi(cid:191) cation with this
young woman who, alone and in the face of analytic opposition, was trying to
introduce into Switzerland the Kleinian analysis she had learned in Argentina.
Melanie Klein very much encouraged and supported her: providing her with
personal clinical supervision and commentary on her psychoanalytic papers; and
Foreword ix
producing reinforcements in the persons of her two stalwarts, Hanna Segal and
Betty Joseph, plus other visitors to her analytic patch in Geneva, such as Herbert
Rosenfeld, Esther Bick, Donald Meltzer, Isabel Menzies and Hans Thorner.
What this correspondence reveals is a growing friendship from letters that
begin, “Chère Madame Spira” and end with “Kindest regards”, to those later that
begin, “Ma chère Marcelle” and end “With Love, yours, Melanie Klein”. There
are 45 letters from Klein to Spira written in English and alas only six draft letters
from Spira to Klein, written in French, as Klein did not keep professional/personal
correspondence. Jean-Michel Quinodoz tells us Betty Joseph’s explanation for
this was her policy of protecting privacy.
What are also vividly revealed are Klein’s professional preoccupations in the
last (cid:191) ve years of her life: (cid:191) ve years in which she wrote Envy and Gratitude,
Narrative of a Child Analysis and such papers as “Our adult world and its roots in
infancy”. Her concern that her work should gain recognition internationally is
evident. She could not manage to journey to South America and therefore wrote:
[I am] all the more happy that Dr Segal is going to work in the Argentine. In
addition to her qualities as an excellent teacher and representative of my
work, she has a very good command of French, which will be helpful.
(Kl 37, 19 September 1958)
It seems that Klein herself was at home reading Spira’s French while writing to
her in English. Possibly English was not her second but third language. Being
read in France in French is a preoccupation for Klein throughout the
correspondence and the (cid:191) nal triumph of a complete French translation of The
Psycho-Analysis of Children is a touching moment. She wrote in May 1959, the
year before her death, “it is the ful(cid:191) lment of a dream that I have had for the past
27 years” (Kl 41, 1 May 1959). Jean-Michel Quinodoz tells us of the vicissitudes
of the translation: its inception by Lacan; its continuance by Rene Diatkine and
its subsequent discontinuance; its resumption by Françoise Girard, which was
again interrupted by her premature death; and its (cid:191) nal completion by her widowed
husband Jean Baptiste Boulanger. Boulanger was French Canadian who trained
in Paris and then resettled in Canada where he played a major role in the creation
of the Canadian Psychoanalytical Society. He (cid:191) rst heard of Klein’s work at
Merleau-Ponty’s lectures in Paris and was enthralled. Lacan asked them to
translate the second half of Klein’s book and Françoise began this in 1954.
Klein’s international connections and interests are evident throughout this
correspondence.
Klein’s optimism in the face of opposition and rejection she transmits to
Marcelle in whom she sees a fellow spirit:
It is very dif(cid:191) cult to stand by oneself, and it needs a great deal of courage and
strength, but I believe you have these two qualities and therefore …you will
