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Melanie Klein in Berlin, by the German psychoanalyst Claudia Frank, is a book we can certainly be grateful for. As Elizabeth Spillius says in her Preface, ‘this book is the work of a true scholar. And we all have much reason to thank Claudia for making us aware of the results of her meticulous comparison of Klein's published papers, her unpublished papers and her clinical treatment work’ (p. xiii).
Going through the pages of this book provides a thought provoking, at times hard but also deeply emotionally involving experience. From a theoretical point of view, the book accompanies the reader on a journey that goes back to the origins of child analysis, where Klein tried to apply Freud's theoretical foundations and technical approach to clinical work with small children, while at the same time showing the courage to suggest new concepts and explore new territories.
The development of the technique of play—that we nowadays take for granted—was a real challenge and a meaningful change, given her initial naïve assumption that she should make children lie down on the couch and free associate, just like adults were supposed to do. Klein bravely overcame Freud's technical prescriptions, by applying his approach with dreams and dreaming to analysis of children's play. Play—as representative of the ubiquitous unconscious phantasy reactivated in the transference situation—was conceived by Klein as equivalent to the oneiric activity where object relations and defences are reenacted.
One more essential issue described in the book regards Klein's focus on the presence of early conscious and unconscious phantasies in small children. This salient theoretical point represents one of Klein's essential contributions to psychoanalysis which furthered the development of Freud's thinking. It opened the way for analysis of young or deeply regressed children and ultimately to the psychoanalytic treatment of psychotic states.
However, more involving and controversial is the assumption of the u