Away from Education: Step-by-Step

Abstract

Melanie Klein’s (1921) “The Development of a Child,” went through a number of revisions over a three-year period and, as late as 1947, she added another note on her earliest work, bidding educational efforts farewell. Snippets of clinical work previously discussed returned in other writing and are worked over, as if something earlier was missed. It would be typical of Klein’s writing style to think out loud, turn back to what could not be known at the time, and then build a new concept. In almost every one of her papers, Klein’s theories were melded to her description of clinical events. Even in this early phase of her development, she strove to convey how she worked. So her theories are like a palimpsest, pieced together bit by bit and captured in her repeated walking phrases, “step by step” and “side by side.” Her writing manifested the difficulties met in the clinic: Just as the child’s earliest defenses flowered into even more elaborate ones, so too did Mrs. Klein’s concepts. Klein’s phrasing of clinical material was forced to carry the weight of the elemental problem of psychoanalysis: She had to express both the frenzy and pathos of ferocious development and the difficulty of catching up. Her first theme was intellectual inhibition and beneath that, resounding anxiety: phobias, night terrors, tantrums, and fear of symbols. We look then into Klein’s turn to “Early Analysis” that she sketched in series of papers written between 1921 and 1931. Near the end of this chapter we mention Klein’s more elaborate thoughts on the pathos of intellectual inhibition. If education had a role to play, it was only because the child was sent to school.