Das »Melanie Klein-Problem«. Zur Publikationsgeschichte der Psychoanalyse des Kindes1

Zusammenfassung: Die Autorin erzählt anhand von Dokumenten im Eitingon-Nachlass und im Melanie Klein Archiv die turbulente äußere und innere Publikationsgeschichte des frühen Hauptwerks von Melanie Klein, Die Psychoanalyse des Kindes, das 1932 im Internationalen Psychoanalytischen Verlag erschien. Schon im Dezember 1927 legte Klein dem Aufsichtsrat des Verlags, Eitingon, den Plan vor, ihre zwei einschlägigen Londoner Vortragskurse von 1925 und 1927 zu einem Buch auszubauen. Sie musste bis zur Verwirklichung nicht nur sachliche Vorbehalte überwinden, die mit ihrer Gegnerschaft zu Anna Freud zusammenhingen, sondern geriet auch mitten in die Krise, die den Verlag Anfang 1932 an den Rand des Bankrotts brachte. Inhaltlich war Klein zunächst davon ausgegangen,

Summary: The »Melanie Klein problem«. An account of the publication history of The Psycho-Analysis of Children. On the basis of documents from the Eitingon and Melanie Klein archives the author describes the turbulent background of the inner and outer publication history of Melanie Klein's major early work, published by Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag in 1932. It was as early as December 1927 that Klein proposed to Eitingon, in his function as supervisor of the Verlag, to publish a book based on the two series of lectures she had held in London in 1925 and 1927. Before accomplishing this, she not only had to overcome impediments derived from her antagonism to Anna Freud, but she also ended up in the midst of the crisis that pushed the Verlag to the brink of bankruptcy. Klein had initially expected that she would merely have to add some minor changes to the manuscripts of her lectures (which still exist). This was, on the whole, the case for Part I. Part II, however, required a more fundamental revision, as she found the theoretical reflection of her clinical experiences still insufficient. The author suggests that Klein could only achieve this revision after having (re?)discovered Freud's ideas about the death drive in his book Civilization and its Discontents which turned out to be an important frame of reference for her thought.