Comments on “Notes on Psychoanalytic Theory and Its Consequences for Technique”

I would like to begin my comments with the Richards' characterization of Melanie Klein's ideas, which I feel is in need of clarification. They base their discussion on the record of the so-called “Freud-Klein controversy” that occurred within the British Psychoanalytical Society between the years 1941 and 1945. This is a bit confusing, since these discussions were held between the adherents of Melanie Klein's views and the adherents of Anna Freud's views. But the Richards take it up as a series of theoretical differences between Klein and “Freud,” meaning, I assume, Sigmund.

Be that as it may, in what follows, I will use “Freud” to mean pere and not fille. The first difference that the Richards see between Freud and Klein is that “for Freud, libido is primary both developmentally and in its importance in psychopathology; for Klein, aggression is primary in both cases” (p. 444). This is incorrect. For Klein, it is not aggression that is important developmentally and in psychopathology, but anxiety, which can arise either from hatred and aggression (anxiety about the safety of the self in the face of one's own hatred and aggression, or of aggression from another) or from love (anxiety on behalf of the loved object). Her view on the relationship between anxiety and development was roughly that too much anxiety would interfere with development (and hence lead to psychopathology), and that too little (excessive gratification) would have the same effect. Obviously, libido and anxiety are linked, but for Klein, it is only insofar as libido is connected to excessive, or insufficient, anxiety that one comes to grief over it developmentally.