The Jung—Klein hybrid

The title of this paper is derived from a formula, invented by A.B. Plaut when he was in the United States, to explain to Jungians in California something of what was taking place in London, i.e. that we were being strongly influenced by Klein's discoveries. The phrase has been used mostly in an unfavourable sense, but Plaut was a rose-grower and he would know that hybrid tea roses were among the most beautiful in existence.

I myself had been influential in interesting Jungians in Klein for the following reasons. In the thirties I was attempting to treat children at the London Child Guidance Clinic; there I was confronted with the fact that Jungians were not only indifferent to problems of childhood but also positively antagonistic to the analysis of children. Jung did leave us a sketchy theory of development, but there was no technique for the analysis of children: he thought that a child's deviation from the normal was mostly to be laid at the door of his parents whose unconscious conflicts influenced him unfavourably. He did, however, treat some latency and pre-adolescent children using a method reminiscent of Alfred Adler: he emphasized the ego and the child's tasks in life, thus avoiding analysis of unconscious processes. Apart from these few cases, he recorded observations on a small girl, Ann by name