Editor’s Introduction

This collection of Paula Heimann’s papers represents the professional development of a clinician, an analyst who in her daily work with patients assessed and reassessed not only her technique but also her theoretical assumptions applied to the clinical work.

Paula Heimann qualified as an analyst in Berlin after she had received a classical Freudian training. Before she could consolidate her training with her own independent work with patients, she had urgently to emigrate to London to save her life. Here she found to her surprise a very different situation from Berlin. In the British Psycho-Analytical Society there were lively discussions and critical appraisals concerning early infant development stimulated by the work of Melanie Klein. It was a new situation for Paula Heimann, and in the draft introduction for this book written in 1978 she said that in Berlin the emphasis had been on the libido and its vicissitudes whereas in London it was all vicissitudes of the death instinct.

Paula Heimann soon became interested in Melanie Klein’s work and she underwent further training with her. In time she became one of her closest associates, and her early papers are clear expositions of some Kleinian conceptualizations applied to subject-matters like sublimation and creativity ,1 the internal object (1948), and the early stages of the Oedipal complex . Other papers like ‘Certain functions of introjection and projection in early infancy’ (1942/52d) and, in co-authorship with Susan Isaacs, ‘Regression’ (1942/52e) have not been included in this volume as in 1978 Paula Heimann decided against including them in her book. They were contributions to the ‘Controversial Discussions’,2 and as such she regarded them as statements of Melanie Klein’s thoughts. We have, however, included the paper on ‘Notes on the life and death instincts’ (19427 52c), which is also based on the Controversial Discussions but was revised and enlarged for its publication. It seems from the draft notes in 19