Hours: Melanie Klein at Work - The Case of Mr. B

Wednesday 17 June 1936

Mr B is “in a desperate state” and “breaks down”, Klein records. He asks her,

How can it help him to know that he feels this way about his mother?

Klein tells him,

That it all refers not only to the real mother, but [also] to the dangers to the internalized mother and his peace of mind about this internalized mother.

Mr B goes on to express “desperate distress” about his wife, and his feelings about a business transaction. He seems to feel he should do something against the Chairman, but cannot. Klein interprets,

That all these, the company, his wife and me, are standing for his mother, and that the anxiety is that he will not be able to save her against the bad Chairman, bull, car,1 etc.

Mr B then tells Klein that he felt “the bottom falling out of him” when he overheard his wife arranging to go with her brother to hear some music. Mr B had not been invited. He accuses Klein, saying:

I seem to think he does not want to speak or that he has nothing to say, but that he could speak for years on end about music without finishing. It is like embroidery where the pattern is lost and the stitches are rotten, if he described what music meant to his mother, to his father and to him. He is overwhelmed with feeling while saying this and cries. Actually, he can only mention that he found himself breaking down once as a child outside the drawing room, and this reminds him of having seen the butler collapsing on a chair because his mother had been angry with him … He feels quite unable to tell me that his breaking down outside the drawing room door was connected with a reprimand of his mother in regard to his music, but he admits it when I say so.

Mr B reproaches Klein during this hour, accusing her of being “omniscient, laying down the law, knowing everything – like God”. He recalls that he “always felt sympathy when the Pharaoh hardened his heart more and more, the more plagues were put on him by God”. Klein writes,