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This book gives us an unparalleled opportunity to see how Melanie Klein developed her method of the psychoanalysis of children: from her clinical notes, Berlin Clinic records and the unpublished texts in the Klein Archive alongside her published work. What later became known as ‘Kleinian analysis’ began with the pioneering analytic work that Melanie Klein did in Berlin with children between and and it was the foundation of the psychoanalytic theories which she developed later in London in conjunction with her colleagues.
When she moved to Berlin she was 38 years old, with three children and separated from her husband. She had little money, few friends and no patrons but what was on her mind was the idea that child psychoanalysis would reveal things as yet unknown, that she would discover them and a belief that they would be welcomed. She was encouraged in this by her first analyst and teacher Sandor Ferenczi in Budapest. She approached Karl Abraham at the Hague Congress of , although she was still a ‘nobody’ in the analytic world, to ask about moving to Berlin. She must have received some encouragement as she quickly embarked on it. She had only been qualified as a member of the Budapest Psychoanalytic Society for two years when she moved to Berlin.
In Berlin was the most exciting psychoanalytic venue of the day under the presiding spirit of Karl Abraham: the first low fee/free analytic clinic had opened a year earlier; the Berlin Institute training was systematized with analysis, seminars and supervision and there were regular scientific meetings. When Melanie Klein arrived, her place in Berlin was so precarious that she gave the Polyclinic as her address. However, undeterred, she gave her first paper on child analysis in February and another entitled Early analysis at the International Congress in Berlin in (‘early’ meant analysis of young children).