Guest Editorial

A hundred years ago, in 1882, Melanie Klein was born. A photograph of her was published last year opposite page 138 of Volume 63 of this Journal, where it was also stated that papers read in her honour would be published later. During 1982–3 Psychoanalytical Societies in many parts of the world held meetings to celebrate her centenary. The papers comprising pages 249 to 332 of Part 3 of Volume 64 of the Journal derive from three such occasions in London; one at the Tavistock Clinic; the second at the Weekend Conference of English-Speaking Members of European Societies; the third a series of Scientific Meetings of the British Psycho-Analytical Society.

Thirty years ago for Melanie Klein's 70th birthday, the Journal also published a special number for which Ernest Jones wrote the preface. He commented, with his congratulations, on the fact that Melanie Klein had lived to see her work established and taken up by 'a considerable number of colleagues and pupils who follow her lead in exploring the deepest depths …' Already in 1952 a number of the papers showed that colleagues and pupils were developing her ideas and using them to throw light on new areas of work, such as Herbert Rosenfeld on schizophrenia, Hanna Segal on aesthetics, Roger Money-Kyrle on ethics, and Wilfred Bion on the working of groups.

In this current group of papers Pearl King, for the first time, places on record the history of Melanie Klein's role in the British Society. She shows how the analytic atmosphere of the Society was such that she was invited and welcomed, and that, although this was followed by much controversy, increasingly her ideas were able to be used and to influence analytic thought here, the Society being able to contain and eventually benefit from the divergencies of view. Thus Melanie Klein became in every sense part of the British Society and its thinking.

Melanie Klein's ideas have not remained static. As I have already indicated, in 1952 new lines of development could be s