Very early on, certain psychoanalysts, among whom Ferenczi, reduced
the main differences between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein to diverging
conceptions of the relationship between education and
psychoanalysis
[8]. This author
had an interest in thus simplifying the matter, for he could then claim to have
clarified the relationship between the two disciplines as early as 1908; but
this simplification was also to engage psychoanalysis on a large detour, full of
confusion and predicaments.
In a certain way, it is Anna Freud who opens
the hostilities. In 1926, she delivers four conferences at the Viennese Society.
These conferences are immediately published as a book. She pursues her critical
vein in another conference, this time at the Berlin Society, in March of the
following year. In May, Barbara Low reports on Anna Freud’s criticism at a
meeting of the British Society – almost a translation according to Jones.
Melanie Klein replies severely in a contribution that bears the title of the
Symposium at which it was presented
[9]. This debate continues in part at
the Tenth Congress of Psychoanalysis, at Innsbruck, the very same year. Rarely
have available documents been so eloquent on the origins of a scientific
controversy, its ties with the confrontation of celebrities, and the use of
rhetoric as a way of camouflaging the comprehension one analyst may have of
another.
The style of the talks or the writings given by the principal
participants of the debates merit more attention than the already familiar
manifest topics of their controversies. Anna Freud begins her first conference
very simply: "In the area of psychoanalysis of children, there are the opinions
of Melanie Klein. We discussed them among ourselves in Vienna. Those who do not
share her views are numerous. I have nothing to add to this myself, as I am not
in a position to settle the question. On the other hand, I would like to explain
my work to you," is essentially what she says
[10]. And she forgets Melanie Klein.
This disregard of Klein's work persists to the end of the second conference,
when she resumes: "Melanie Klein thinks that a child’s play is the
equivalent of adult free association. At first glance, this solves all problems.
This is not the case." And Anna Freud dedicates her entire third conference to
this question, so as to reject Klein's experience. "No, a child’s play
does not correspond to free association
[11]." She explains her statement
and, once again, simply forgets Melanie Klein. At her fourth conference, she
does not bring this up and devotes herself entirely to expounding her conception
of the relationships between the psychoanalysis of children and education, and
finishes by diminishing the importance of the first. She totally dismisses
Melanie Klein. That is Anna Freud’s fundamental violence: she regards the
other with distraction, she would like to ignore the other, not see him/her. It
is true that the expression of this personality trait was not exclusively
reserved for Melanie Klein. It was used with all those persons whose interest
for the advancement of her cause she was unable to grasp.
At this time,
Melanie Klein has already written more than ten papers on the analysis of
children, but she has not yet written a book, supposed to be more prestigious.
She has just settled in London. Her principal theories are well-established: the
difference between the child and adult psychoanalysis concerns a technique, and
not principles
[12]; in the analysis
of children, transference is established at once
[13]; the object of analysis is the
œdipal complex, repression and castration
anxiety
[14]. Anna Freud took
none of this into consideration. Melanie Klein’s response to her was
implacable.
Anna Freud addresses the psychoanalytic community when she
talks about Melanie Klein. She explains what she considers to be the differences
between them. Melanie Klein, on the contrary, asks the psychoanalytic community
to bear witness to her personal indictment of Anna Freud. Over and above the
psychoanalytic community, Anna Freud's person is her personal target. As she
recounts the history of the psychoanalysis of children, she shows the progress
and the errors of Hug-Hellmuth, she uses Freud’s experience to support her
statements and refutes almost every line of her rival’s paper. In sum,
Melanie Klein simply says: "Anna Freud doesn’t understand a single thing,
she doesn’t say a word about the œdipal complex, the castration
complex or about guilt; she says nothing about the unconscious, anxiety, or
about the particularities of transference"; "Anna Freud’s premises and
conclusions form a vicious circle"; "I cannot but vigorously combat Anna
Freud’s statement"; "Anna Freud, I believe, often overestimates and
therefore does not correctly interpret"; "...one of the reasons for the
disagreements between Anna Freud and myself...", "my analytical knowledge of
small children compels me to support a completely different opinion..",
"...probably the most striking and the most fundamental difference in our
attitudes.." and finally: "What was missing in Anna Freud’s
interpretation ?
Everything...
[15]”
Thus
is Melanie Klein’s violence. She believes she knows what the other ignores
and only she really knows. For she does knows. She looks at Anna Freud up close
and, above all, she does not want her rival to elude her scrutinising gaze,
whereas the other claims to avert her eyes. She knows all the texts, and she
cites them. Melanie Klein cannot stand the fact that the other systematically
disqualifies the psychoanalysis of children, considering it a by-product of
adult analysis, a position undoubtedly in retreat with respect to Freud’s
position. Neither of them wish to recognise that, basically, it is not the same
child who occupies them. The violence they exercise against one another is
diametrically opposed and yet, with time, the violence of the one will espouse
the forms of the other’s violence. It is Melanie Klein who will no longer
pay attention to the theoretical work of Anna Freud and it will be Anna Freud
who will constantly be attentive to Melanie Klein. But the violence to come will
be totally different.
In 1927, the Innsbruck Congress unfolded in a
climate of widespread suspicion and violence. The violence of supposed disguised
censorship concerning psychoanalytical publications exercised by Jones and by
Radò, the violence of the discussions between Freud and Jones on the
subject of Anna’s analysis, the violence of the triumvirate formed by
Freud, Ferenczi and Eitingon against Jones’ accession to the presidency of
the International Association, the violence provoked by the overlapping of the
issues of lay and child analysis.
It is in this climate that Anna Freud
provides an unvarying response to Melanie Klein: she feigns to hear nothing. In
the paper she presents at Innsbruck, "Contribution to the theory of child
analysis", she pretends Melanie Klein advocates her own theses. Claiming for
herself and for other analysts important advancements with respect to Kleinian
theses, Anna Freud goes on to a lengthy account of cases and concludes that the
analyst should be aware of “the educational influences to which the child
is submitted and – whenever it seems necessary – should discharge
the educators from their task for the duration of analysis and take it on
himself
[16].” Now it is at
this same meeting that Melanie Klein presents an extremely important paper,
which brings child psychoanalysis out of its prehistory and starts its own
history: "The early stages of the œdipal conflict". Indeed, this paper
brings about a revolution in psychoanalysis, as it touches on a good number of
issues : among these, the conception of the formation of the ego and the
superego, the differences in the psychical development of girls and boys. It
also widens the traditional approaches to psychosis. Melanie Klein makes no
references to Anna Freud and, unfortunately, some of her theses seem remarkably
similar to those of Rank, with whom Freud has just broken.
And the
theoretical debate between the two women thus closes. The clinical quarrels
between Melanie Klein and Anna Freud are finished. Five years later, introducing
her 1932 book, Melanie Klein reviews disagreements between them. Essentially
they concern children’s transference and the technique needed to interpret
it, as well as the precocity of the
superego
[17]. Until 1947,
neither one will mention the other in her writings. That year, Melanie Klein
adds a short introduction to the paper in which she so vividly attacked Anna
Freud : "Things have considerably changed, Anna Freud has changed a great deal,
her ideas have come closer to mine!" That’s all. This note refers to a
last remark made by Susan Isaacs in the discussion of her own paper during the
controversies of the British Society, for even if in the book Anna Freud
publishes in 1946, she still reaffirms her doubts with respect to the
possibility of perfectly identifying the technique of play and free association,
she never mentions Melanie Klein’s name. Reciprocal attempts to harm one
another is left to intermediaries or done in the bastions.
This does not
mean that there were no heated exchanges between them when they met each other
in London at the British Society. But also on rare occasions when their personal
contact revealed a certain amount of agreement, they were able to disregard
reciprocal animosity. Nonetheless, the essence of the debate, its most violent
but also its most productive period, did not last more that a few months in
1927. What began as rumours during the twenties in Vienna and Berlin reaches its
peak then, and yields ground to mutual ignorance. If both analysts still met
each other in 1929, on the committee in charge of the psychoanalysis of children
at the International Congress held in Oxford, we have no knowledge of the
contents of their discussions. We will later return to the questions raised by
the controversies which took place during the Second World
War.
The exchange conferences
The violence
between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein was accrued by a well spread violence
existing in the psychoanalytical movement of the time. A solution to this state
of affairs was attempted in the form of a series of conferences.
For the
first time, at the Innsbruck Congress, British analysts were massively present
on the international scene. They supported Melanie Klein who was counting, in
particular, with the backing of the British apparatus and notably with Jones,
its president, and with Glover, its vice-president. Until then, the British had
held an inferior position with respect to the “continental” analytic
scene, by definition from Vienna, Budapest and Berlin. But this time the
“continentals” had no new thesis to propose. It became evident that
what was going on was not simply a quarrel about jealousy or about priority
between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, but something quite different, which
called into question established psychoanalytic theories. It also appeared that
the relations between two important groups of analysts, the
“British” and the “Continentals”, were at risk of
deteriorating. Undoubtedly oriented by Freud, Federn and Jones decided to
organise an exchange of conferences between Vienna and London.
The first
one was held in Vienna on April 24, 1935. In dealing with female infantile
sexuality, Jones explains his understanding of the differences between the two
psychoanalytic groups, but also states that these are not disagreements between
two schools of psychoanalysis or even among diverging trends within each school.
They are simply differences in the individual opinions of analysts poorly
informed about one another, in countries divided by the continuing aggravation
of social and economic conditions. Jones sustains his diplomatic skills
throughout his talk. His tact leads him to state, for example: “Few are
those English analysts who read the
Zeitschrift or the Viennese analysts
who read the
Journal...It is true that German work is more easily
accepted by the
Journal than is English work by the
Zeitschrift...” – one of many examples in which the
claiming of an inferior position is subsequently transformed into the
affirmation of a superior position. Jones firmly states these differences of
opinion in the presence of Freud, who accepts them without treating either Jones
or Melanie Klein as dissidents. However, later in the same talk, Jones revises
his position and points to the existence of two "schools", the
“British” and the “Viennese”. He was of course
simplifying things.
Within a few months, in November, Wälder goes to
London to present his first exchange conference,
The Problems of Ego
Psychology. This presentation, which has never been found, was probably
rewritten and published later as a chapter of one of his
books
[18]. He frequently
mentions Melanie Klein whose ideas he finds stimulating but difficult to
corroborate, given the fact that they are based on children who have not yet
acquired the use of speech. Nonetheless, he does not consider her a dissident.
Wälder sustains the same tone of diplomatic politeness that Jones had used.
The British gave him a warm welcome and organised small groups to receive him
and discuss in detail all the themes raised during his conference
[19].
On May 5, 1936, Joan
Riviere presented another conference, this time in Vienna. The subject was the
genesis of psychic conflict in early infancy. Riviere specifies that the
questions she is dealing with – particularly those related to oral sadism,
projection and introjection – have already been presented in London by her
predecessor. This is the only time she mentions a Viennese author other than
Freud, whom she cites abundantly, together with Melanie Klein. She also cites
Glover, Melitta Schmideberg, Sylvia Payne, Marjorie Brierley and Karin Stephen,
but never does she mention Anna Freud.
Her presentation is above all
propaganda: “The novel work of Melanie Klein has led, in particular, to a
close study of the problems of the British Psychoanalytical Society and has, in
my opinion, directly or indirectly influenced the greater part of the work of
its members in the last few years”; “The work of Melanie Klein and
of her disciples has shown us that the psychic mechanisms of projection and
introjection have a much greater importance and a far wider influence on each
stage of psychic development than was previously believed
[20]”, and so on. Many of her
statements do not coincide with the assertions made by other British authors at
the time. Brierley, who does not totally reject Kleinian theses, never seems to
have admitted all of them and, above all, does not acknowledge their influence
on her work. Joan Riviere is an emphatic, passionate and fascinating speaker.
She lacks on this occasion Jones' or Wälder’s tact and
measure.
The same year, the response to Riviere’s contribution is
given again by Wälder, in a talk which simply points out the problems
raised by his colleague
[21]. He
recognises that numerous analysts have contributed to the expansion of
psychoanalysis – and Melanie Klein in particular – even if British
authors are not unanimous in their opinions. He develops at length his
conceptions of the criteria defining scientific work, and in particular, those
criteria he understands as specific to psychoanalysis. Wälder does not
consider any of his arguments as conclusive, but he thinks with modesty, that
they confer on him a right to raise questions and that no response based simply
on arguments such as "analysis has shown" or "our experience has shown" can
satisfy him. If it is true that Wälder comes close to stating that Kleinian
views correspond to a paranoid construction, his own conceptions of science are
not far from it.
He finds some points difficult to admit, such as Melanie
Klein’s conception of phantasy and transference. Concerning the first
point, Kleinian theory appears to him as a “biologism without
biology” but, once again, he has no intention to refute her arguments, but
wishes to record differences of opinion. Concerning the second point, he finds
that Kleinian analysts seem to neglect the aspects of reality which are a part
of transference. Wälder finds traumatic the use of interpretation which, in
his opinion, is of a seductive nature, for it neglects the educational character
of the simple presence of an adult by a child. On the other hand, Wälder
finds Kleinian usage of the concept of introjection interesting, even if he
questions the uniformity of its utilisation. Finally, Wälder revives a
question which will be taken up again in its totality by Lacan: it is not
evident that psychotic traits present in the normal ego are the same as those
found in psychotics.
Even if Wälder does not have Riviere’s
flame or Jones’ diplomacy, he intends to be far more attentive and
courteous than the two British speakers had been. Even if, in a certain sense,
he may sometimes seem boring, Wälder shows a concern for establishing real
exchanges. Jones, but even more so Joan Riviere, aim rather at disseminating
their theses. The manifest violence of the period around 1926-27 became latent
during this later period, given repression stemming from two sources: the needed
sublimation imposed by Freud and, as pointed out by Pearl King and Riccardo
Steiner
[22], the growth of Nazi
violence. It is on the basis of the disagreements previously evoked that the
scientific discussions will resume later, during the major
controversies.
The Great controversies
I now
wish to submit the following considerations. The first extraordinary business
meeting, called by four members of the British Society of Psychoanalysis, took
place on February 25, 1942. Four other similar meetings were held successively,
through June 10. At the general annual meeting held on July 29, the organisation
of a set of scientific meetings was decided and their planning was completed by
October 21.
The business meetings of these controversies are a full first
part of them. They correspond to the institutional aspect of psychoanalytic
politics. During these meetings, Glover discovers a sort of unanimity against
him: he has been holding power for too long and he is autocratic. He and Melitta
Schmideberg accuse Melanie Klein and hers disciples of plotting to obtain full
control of the Training Committee, although it is not clear whether Glover was
not himself aiming at the same thing. He bases his allegations on wrong data.
Sylvia Payne, who was not considered a Kleinian, manages to establish true data,
which contradicts him.
In 1939, Anna Freud had refused to organise lectures
on child psychoanalysis at the British Society. She justified this by claiming
that those who had received a different psychoanalytic training could not
benefit from her teaching. The following year, she struck even harder. During
the Training Committee meeting of April 24, 1940, she violently attacks Melanie
Klein, claiming that only her own methods and those of her co-workers deserved
the label "Freudian analysis". She accuses Klein's work of being a by-product.
The proof she gives is the difference between Klein's work and what she and
"true Freudians" knew to be "true analysis". She thus put herself in an
extremely delicate situation for, at the same meeting, Glover tries to exclude
Kleinian theories from the Society's teaching (Grosskurth, 320 & 326). This
was the only occasion in which Anna Freud and Glover came close to forming an
alliance.
And yet, on the preceding day, April 23, Strachey had written to
Glover, then President of the Training Committee, to recommend an altogether
different solution. He wrote : “I should rather like you to know (for your
personal information) that - if it comes to a show-down - I'm very strongly in
favour of compromise at all costs
[23]”. This is the first
occasion during the controversies in which an open conflict breaks out between
Strachey and Glover. With time, the outcome of the controversies will depend
more on disagreements between these two men rather than on the conflict between
Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. But Melanie Klein did not wait for Strachey's
letter to protect herself. During this meeting, she worked to isolate Glover
from the rest of the British group. With time, it will appear that Glover never
managed to really confront the group and try to win its favour.
The best
conclusion that one can come to about this incident between Anna Freud and
Melanie Klein, and the most generous one too, is that Anna Freud was simply
trying to protect, above all else, her Austrian psychoanalytic identity, all
that was left to this group of refugees. We must also remember that,
particularly for Anna Freud, loosing her country was equivalent to loosing her
father. It was because of this great pain, and in her attempt to work through
the mourning of this loss, that she claimed for herself alone the title of
"Freudian analysis". An interpretation of this episode as full of calculations
and suppositions in view of base political manoeuvres does not seem to be
appropriate. An angelic view that would attribute to British psychoanalysts and
to older refugees the wish to protect a fragile orphan would be undue
idealisation. Between these two views, something more realistic must have
occurred.
Melanie Klein was brave enough to call Anna Freud on January 1,
1942. They most certainly presented to one another the usual greetings for this
period of the year. Klein later wrote to Riviere about what they had talked.
They had agreed that a splitting of the Society should be avoided. They
validated their old idea of two parallel Training Courses in the Society, which
could later lead to some collaboration. Anna Freud feared that these ideas would
not be accepted by the rest of the Society. Even if she thought that Glover
would be a better President, she was ready to accept Sylvia Payne in that
position, since she found her sufficiently independent and objective towards
both their contributions. Klein proposed the organisation of closed meetings
between their two groups to tackle existing divergences. Anna Freud accepted
this principle. Both of them agreed that these meetings should be open to others
members. Finally, Anna Freud gave up this project, after it had been criticised
by Marjorie Brierley, apparently for institutional reasons, but which could have
concealed a fear of encountering strangers. In any case, there were bridges
enough between the two women. For instance, Willi Hoffer and Joan Riviere were
old friends. Melanie Klein's telephone call prefigured almost the entire
development of the controversies. She was well aware that Anna Freud was not a
real menace to her.
During the five extraordinary business meetings, not
once did these two women came close to hurting one another. Nor did the members
of their respective groups attack one another. Reading the descriptions of these
meetings, we may have the weird impression of children's dragon tales, when they
expect that dragons will fight to death simply because this is what their
infantile phantasy tells them. Maybe the climate was heavy for some of the
participants, but it was seldom stormy: thunder didn't strike where it was
expected. The primal scene appears violent, but most often it is a storm in a
child's bath. Real acrimony during these controversies was expressed by Glover
and Melitta Schmideberg against Melanie Klein and her group. Their criticism was
virulent. They accused her of plagiarism, of plotting to gain power, of
corrupting patients to convert them to their theories, of fractionism and
proselytism. Most of these accusations were delusory, and those which might have
been grounded were expressed in such a way that they met general reprobation.
Finally, accusations and attacks showed their true nature: they were not really
aimed against a person or a group, but against psychoanalysis itself and the
institution that was protecting it at that time. For the accusers, proof that
the institution was bad was the fact that it would not support them. Even if
Anna Freud or Melanie Klein were at times discouraged by the Society’s
situation, they were never so venomous as Glover and Melitta.
On July 29,
1942, the members of the institution asked the Training Committee to prepare a
report on its orientations and to organise scientific meetings in which the
Kleinians could explain their theories. On September 21, 1942, in response to
this first request, Glover presented to the Training Committee an introductory
paper on the psychoanalytical training. From then until February 1944, the
Training Committee meetings and the Scientific meetings were held in parallel,
as King and Steiner have pointed
[24]. On January 27, 1943, Susan
Isaacs presented her paper on the nature and function of phantasy. There seems
to be no real evidence that this meeting and the following ones have been
violent or dramatic in any way, even if they were sometimes passionate. The
arguments advanced may nowadays appear clear or obscure, but the discussions did
not bring anything unheard of.
Meanwhile, on February 24, Strachey offered
his own notes on psychoanalytical training to the Training Committee: they
conveyed a very different orientation from the one presented by Glover, whom he
severely criticised. Glover reacted immediately and violently, to reaffirm his
views and attack Strachey's. Allow me to state here that Strachey's
commentaries, which will became a report, are one of the most beautiful pieces
on epistemology and, to my opinion, quite better than what philosophers like
Popper or the like would develop latter.
Anna Freud’s first
intervention at a Scientific meeting occurred the same day Susan Isaacs
presented her paper, just after Jones' and Glover's commentaries. She thanked
Isaacs for the clarity of her paper, for her contribution to an improved
understanding and description of the divergences. Anna Freud intervened twice
during the fourth meeting of the scientific controversies, on April 7. This
time, she opened the discussion by presenting what for her and maybe for most
participants were the real divergences, namely: the age at which object
relations and early phantasies begin, the synthetic function of the ego and the
early feelings of guilt and reparation, the use of the concept of early
phantasy. This last concept seems to have been at the very core of these
divergences.
Anna Freud was to raise her voice once more at the end of this
fourth meeting, to answer a question by Sylvia Payne on the subject of her
conception of the age when object relations start. Anna Freud replied that she
was ready to accept their beginning as early as the sixth month.
During the
last meeting at which her paper was discussed, Susan Isaacs made a long speech,
in which she summarised her understanding of the Austrian positions. Her summary
was largely based on Wälder's interventions during the exchange conferences
of 1936 and 1937 and on Anna Freud's book,
The ego and the defence
mechanisms. Susan Isaacs showed with rich details Anna Freud's
transformation from the time her book was published to her most recent
interventions. Anna Freud was to speak once more and for the last time during
these scientific meetings. She wanted to put on record that not answering right
away did not mean that she agreed or accepted the theories just
expressed.
Given that there were no other interventions by Anna Freud or by
members of her group, it seems delicate to attribute these controversies to
disagreements between herself and Melanie Klein, or even between Freudians and
Kleinians. An altogether different thing is to wonder why, generation after
generation, we have believed this was so. A very simple answer would be to
suppose that Kleinians have had an interest in presenting the controversies this
way, allowing them to claim a "victory" over "Freudians" and even over Freud
himself. This particular moment of psychoanalytic history really did correspond,
after all, to the constitution of the Kleinian movement as such. But Klein
claimed to be a Freudian as much as Glover did, and a better one, too.
Roudinesco gives us more generous reasons to consider these controversies as
"great" and as implying the names of Freud and Klein. To begin with, she
underlines the fact that, for the first time, serious psychoanalytic divergences
did not end up in dissidence or exclusion and, second, that these controversies
inaugurated an era of reinterpretation of Freud's works.
I want to point
out still two other reasons. The first one is that, all in all, these
controversies have been a long and careful enterprise of clarification of
Freud's and, secondarily, of Klein's contributions to psychoanalysis. The second
one is that these controversies created for the first time the space for open
debate in which psychoanalysis would blossom as a special mode of oral and
written transmission of human experience. As such, the controversies implied in
a most important way the names of the Stracheys, Marjorie Brierley, Kate
Friedlander, Ella Sharpe, Adrian and Karin Stephen, of course Sylvia Payne; John
Rickman, and other psychoanalysts who, without being Freudians in the sense
understood by Glover, were true Freudians and, without being Kleinians, really
wanted to understand Klein's theories.
After Anna Freud's remarks, the
controversies went their own way. Following the clash between Glover and
Strachey, in the autumn of 1943, while the Society was quickly discussing Paula
Heimann's paper on introjection and projection, Anna Freud, Marjorie Brierley
and Melanie Klein presented their own contributions to the Training Committee.
Just after this discussion, at its meeting held on November 24, 1943, Ella
Sharpe and Sylvia Payne presented their notes on training. Finally, a
preliminary report of the committee was presented and discussed. After long
considerations on the functioning of the Training Committee, this report
suggested that members “prominently involved in acute scientific or
personal controversies” should not be appointed to the Training Committee
or as training and control analysts.
These recommendations produced
something that until then was unseemly, but that now unveils its implacable
logic. Glover did not agree with the preliminary report: he felt that its
recommendations were aimed at him and he resigned from the Society. Glover's
letter was read at the Training Committee meeting of January 24, 1944. Anna
Freud asked if she was eligible for training and control and declared that, if
not so, she would also resign. Melanie Klein, apparently, never felt that these
recommendations concerned her. The following day, she wrote to the members of
her group : “The immediate cause for his resignation was the fact that the
majority of the members of the Training committee, not consulting me at all in
this matter, has united against him and expressed their distrust of his
partisanship...
[25]”.
Apparently, she never felt that her own partisanship could have engendered
similar distrust.
Ella Sharpe expressed the true reasons for Glover's
resignation during this same meeting. She said : “I do not support Dr.
Glover's proposal to report to the Society that training has broken down
scientifically and practically. ... I wish Dr. Glover had not allowed himself to
attack his English colleagues, who during these years have given students and
their welfare the most assiduous and unfailing attention, believing that in that
way the securest foundation for sound judgements would be laid. "Timid",
"indifferent, "incoherent", "unorganised", are the epithets he allows himself.
That is as far as Dr Glover seems to see or understand. The worst of making
unconsidered charges of this kind is that of provoking counter charges.”
Ella Sharpe, I believe, was thus expressing the general feelings of the Training
Committee.
At the beginning of February, members were informed of
Glover’s resignation during extraordinary business meeting. They were
surprised and torn as to the measures that should be taken following Glover's
letter and Sylvia Payne commentaries. The proposal that certain members not be
allowed to teach was deleted from the final report of the Training Committee.
Anna Freud and Melanie Klein had many reasons to be satisfied, even though the
first one did not immediately reassume her teaching.
A certain aspect of
these meetings, Glover's and Melitta Schmideberg's personal attacks against
Melanie Klein and her group, began February 25, 1942 and lasted no later than
February 9, 1944, just about two years. A pale shadow of the discussions between
Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, a superficial remake of the exchange conferences
between Vienna and London, carried on mainly by the only analysts recognised as
belonging to one of the two groups, Dorothy Burlingham and Susan Isaacs, did not
last much longer than the first five scientific meetings held between January 27
and May 19, 1943, in other words not more than five months. After Glover’s
resignation, the Society calmly tackled the issue of regression, raised by Susan
Isaacs and Paula Heimann. As history usually plays its tricks well, at this same
meeting, members were to witness one of the most interesting discussions of the
entire controversies, on the death drive. Was this not what had driven Glover
and Melitta and what the Society had learned to protect itself from, through
thought and theorisation ? On March 8, the Training Committee’s final
report was discussed at an extraordinary business meeting. In it, Strachey
explained his own work and emphasised that the final report included many of
Glover's opinions.
The Second World War reached its end and so did the
pioneer group of Kleinians. From 1947 on, a distance began to grow between Joan
Riviere and Melanie Klein, John Rickman was no longer considered a Kleinian,
Susan Isaacs died suddenly in 1948 and, as of 1949, Paula Heimann and Melanie
Klein started to avoid each other, after the first one published a paper on
countertransference, the only point that Melanie Klein could not accept and her
theory could not include. On June 26, 1946, after a two-year absence, Anna Freud
returned to the Society's meetings; in November, peace was concluded and the
project of a psychoanalytic training based on two courses was established. Time
was to bring more reasonable alternatives to this project.
And
after
However, in many ways, the controversies were still not
over. I want to mention some occurrences of their persistence.
On June 3,
1954, Winnicott wrote to Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, asking them to put an end
to their groups or at least to their official existence. He wrote : "We might
say that whereas Mrs Klein's partisans are all children and grandchildren, Mrs
Freud's have all been to the same
school
[26]." This seemed to be
a delicate way of implying that being children's analysts would not help Melanie
Klein to mourn her own children or to mourn the idealised mother she might have
dreamed to be or to possess, nor would it help Anna Freud to mourn her early
schoolteacher dreams. But Winnicott was already writing from a Middle Group
point of view. If this group came to be the external guarantor of a hungry
mutual comprehension between those two groups, by the same token, it was
excluded from the complicity that such a querulous cohabitation implies.
As
of 1963, the drama in the atmosphere slowly began to dissipate. Concerning the
transformations of the British society, Strachey stated in his speech for its
Jubilee: “Moreover, I should question, really, whether such changes are as
important basically as is sometimes believed. No doubt we nowadays hear rather
more of mamma and rather less of papa. But I suspect that the really fundamental
points in Freud's discoveries remains unchanged - such as the difference between
the primary and secondary processes of thought
[27].” We should remember that
disregard for this distinction was one of Glover’s main criticisms of
Melanie Klein.
In any case, when transference and counter transference are
not acknowledged, what is no longer dramatised in one place will reappears as
new drama elsewhere. When the British crisis reached a fair end, the French
crisis started to grow. What disappeared with Glover, reappeared with Lacan,
from an institutional and political point of view. Of course, many things were
not acknowledged, for psychoanalytic history seems to be, to a great extent, a
permanent return of the repressed. Between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, there
seems to have been a repressed transferential and countertransferential element:
when Anna Freud advocated the coexistence of education and psychoanalysis, she
was mainly justifying her analysis with her father, whereas when Melanie Klein
saw an abyss between these two disciplines, she was mainly trying to repress the
fact that her first experiences as an analyst were with her own children. Both
these women made important contributions to psychoanalytic theory. Their human
differences seem irrelevant today, especially if we take into account the fact
that, in many ways, their sufferings were similar. Among these, I would like
emphasise their difficulty to mourn their ancestors, not only their relatives
but also their cultural ancestors. We have inherited these
difficulties.
The forces that clashed during the controversies were not
mainly those of these two women, but those of a conception of psychoanalysis
based on the acknowledgement of transference and history, as suggested in
Strachey’s reports, and another conception, based on a totalitarian
comprehension of psychoanalytic objectivity and its consequence for human
beings.
Only our neutral attention guarantees that countertransference and
interpretation will not become suggestion, and will protect developments of our
patients’ metapsychology during their cures. Only our capacity to remember
can transform mourning into creativity. Our psychoanalytic institutions should
also protect this infinitely delicate work.
[1] E. Jones, La vie et
l’œuvre de Sigmund Freud, les dernières années
(1919-1939), trad. L. Flournoy, PUF, 1969, p.
89.
[2] M. Klein, “Le
développement d’un enfant”,
Essais de psychanalyse,
trad. M. Derrida, Payot, 1968, p.
29-90.
[3] E. Jones,
“Sexualité féminine primitive, Théorie et pratique de
la psychanalyse, trans. A. Stronck, Payot,
1969.
[4] J. Laplanche,
Problématiques V. Le banquet: transcendance du transfert, P.U.F., 1987,
p. 103-111. See also X.Renders, Le jeu de la demande, une histoire de la
psychanalyse d’enfants, De Boeck-Université, 1991, p.
182-195.
[5] C. Geissmann and P.
Geissmann, Histoire de la psychanalyse d’enfants: mouvements,
idées, perspectives, Paidos/Bayard, 1992, P;
212-225.
[6] G. Kohon,
“Notes on the history of the psychoanalytic movement in Great
Britain”, The British School of Psychoanalysis. The Independent Tradition,
London, Free Association Books,
1986.
[7] E. Rayner, Le groupe
des “Indépendants” et la psychanalyse britannique, trans.
directed by C. Wieder, P.U.F., 1994, p. 14-15 and
18-19.
[8] S. Frenczi,
“L’adaptation de la famille à l’enfant”, trans.
by the Coq Héron group of translators, Psychanalyse, 4, Œuvres
Complètes, t. IV: 1927-1933, Payot, 1982, p.
36.
[9] Cf. P Grosskurth, Melanie
Klein, son monde et son œuvre, trans. C. Anthony, PUF,
1989.
[10] A. Freud, Le
traitement psychanalytique des enfants, first and second parts translated from
German by E. Rochat, third part translated from English by A. Berman, PUF, 1981,
p. 11-12.
[11] Ibid., p.
41-46.
[12] M. Klein,
“Les fondements psychologiques de l’analyse d’enfants”,
La psychanalyse des enfants, trans. J.B. Boulanger, PUF, 1969, p.
27.
[13] M. Klein, “La
technique de l’analyse des jeunes enfants”, ibid., p.
33.
[14] M. Klein,
“L’analyse des jeunes enfants”, Essais de psychanalyse, op.
cit., p. 115.
[15] M. Klein,
“Colloque sur l’analyse des enfants”, Essais de psychanalyse,
op. cit. p. 193-203.
[16] A.
Freud, “Contribution à la théorie de l’analyse
infantile”, Le traitement psychanalytique des enfants, op. cit., p.
88.
[17] M. Klein, La
psychanalyse des enfants, op. cit., p.
11-12.
[18] R. Waelder,
“La psychologie analytique du moi”, Les fondements de la
psychanalyse, trad. P. Berlot, Payot, 1962, p.
167-196.
[19] P. King,
“Background and Developement of the Freud-Klein Controversies in the
British Psycho-Analytical Society”, The Freud-Klein Controversies,
1941-1945, Tavistock and Routledge, London and New York, 1991, p.
23.
[20] J. Riviere, “Sur
la genèse du conflit psychique dans la toute première
enfance”, Développements de la psychanalyse, trad. W. Baranger,
PUF, 1966, p. 35-63, and especially
36-38.
[21] R. Wälder,
“The Problem of the Genesis of Psychic Conflict in Earliest
Infancy”, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1937, 18,
406-473.
[22]. P. King and R.
Steiner, The Freud-Klein Controversies, op. cit., p.
24-27.
[23]. Idem, p. 32.
[24]. Idem, p.
242.
[25]. Idem, p.
667-668.
[26] D. W. Winnicott,
Lettres vives, trad. M. Gribinski, Gallimard, 1987, pp.
114-115.
[27]. The British
Psychoanalytical Society,
Fiftieth Anniversary, 30 october 1963.
