Abstract
Melanie Klein’s significance rests partly on her application of psycho analysis to children, evident in her earliest work, but throughou her career we find consistency and evolution in the development o her ideas relating to an internal object world for children and adult alike. Most of Klein’s writing refers to examples from her practice an involves formulation of her key concepts, often in relation to Sigmun Freud. Klein rarely applied her ideas to a wider context, but ther are some writings on culture, including notes for a review of Citize Kane (1941). 1 The relevance of Kleinian thinking for culture rests o its conception of art as a practice that is capable of articulating grea negativity for both the artist and the viewer through an understandin of the imagination that is, ultimately, constructive and benign. Thi vision of an imaginary world operating from birth will be explore further by considering the application of Klein’s ideas to film and, i particular, Wild Strawberries, one of Ingmar Bergman’s most psycho analytic films. The latter offers comparisons to Klein’s preoccupatio with the death drive, and the representation of a cathartic process, in which the lead character models a process of psychic transformatio and integration.
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Notes
Klein’s notes on Citizen Kane describe the eponymous character’s narcissistic personality and the manic way he attempts to stave off loss and melancholia through internal objects. The latter involves his accumulation of possessions, amongst which are the sled, and his wife, whom he manipulates. Laura Mulvey introduces these notes commenting on how the film demands ‘a psychoanalytic imagination’ and how Klein provides this: Stonebridge, L. and Phillips, J. (eds.) (1998), Reading Melanie Klein, London: Routledge, pp. 245–254.
Riviere, J. ‘The Unconscious Phantasy of an Inner World Reflected in Examples From Literature’, in Klein, M., Heimann, P. and Money-Kyrle, R. E. (eds.) (1977) New Directions in Psycho-Analysis: The Significance of Infant Conflict in the Pattern of Adult Behaviour, London: Tavistock, first published in 1955 by H. Karnac (Books), pp. 346–369; p. 348.
Klein, M. (1923) ‘Early Analysis’, in Klein, M. (1998) Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works 1921–1945, London: Vintage (originally published in 1975 by The Hogarth Press), pp. 77–105; p. 86.
Klein, M. (1929) ‘Infantile Anxiety Situations Reflected in a Work of Art and in The Creative Impulse’, in Klein, Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works 1921–1945, op. cit., pp. 210–218.
Klein, M. (1957) ‘Envy and Gratitude’, in Klein, M. (1997), Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946–1963, London: Vintage (originally published in 1975 by The Hogarth Press), pp. 176–235; pp. 190–191.
Alford, C. F. ‘Kleinian Theory Is Natural Law Theory’, in Mills, J. (ed.) (2006) Other Banalities, Melanie Klein Revisited, Hove, New York: Routledge, pp. 217–245; p. 222.
Ibid., p. 223.
Riviere, J. ‘The Unconscious Phantasy of an Inner World Reflected in Examples From Literature’, in Klein, Heimann, Money-Kyrle (eds.), op. cit., p. 357.
Likierman, M. (2001) Melanie Klein: Her Work in Context, London: Continuum, p. 76.
Freud, S. (2005) On Murder, Mourning and Melancholia, translated by Shaun Whiteside, (essays first published from 1913 to 1933), London: Penguin, pp. 201–218.
Klein, M. (1940) ‘Mourning and Its Relation to Manic-Depressive States’, in Klein, Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works 1921–1945, op. cit., pp. 344–369; p. 344.
Rustin, M. ‘Klein on Human Nature’, in Mills, J. (ed.) (2006) Other Banalities, Melanie Klein Revisited, op. cit., pp. 25–44; p. 34.
Bott Spillius, E., Milton, J., Garvey, P., Couve, C. and Steiner, D. (2011) The New Dictionary of Kleinian Thought, Hove; New York: Routledge, p. 408.
Klein, in Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works, op. cit., p. 363.
Klein, M. (1946) ‘Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms’ in Klein, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946–1963, op. cit., pp. 1–24; p. 1.
As Rustin points out, ‘Richard Wollheim, the leading philosophical advocate of psychoanalysis in Britain in recent years, defended psychoanalysis for its affinities with the psychological understandings embedded in everyday language’, in Mills (ed.), op. cit., p. 41, n16. Rustin references Wollheim, R. (1994), ‘Desire, Belief and Dr Grunbaum’s Freud’, in The Mind and Its Depth s, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Segal, H. (1979) Klein, [S.I.]: Harvester Press, p. 140.
Riviere, J. ‘The Unconscious Phantasy of an Inner World Reflected in Examples from Literature’, in Klein, Heimann, Money-Kyrle (eds.), op. cit., p. 360.
Riviere, J. ‘The Unconscious Phantasy of an Inner World Reflected in Examples from Literature’, in Klein, Heimann, Money-Kyrle (eds.), op. cit., p. 358.
Stokes, A. ‘Form in Art’, in Klein, Heimann, Money-Kyrle (eds.), op. cit., pp. 406–421; p. 410.
Bach, S ‘Discussion of Greenberg’s Article’, in Kaminsky, S. and Hill, J. F. (eds.) (1975) Ingmar Bergman: Essays in Criticism, London: Oxford University Press, pp. 194–201; p. 197.
Cowie, E. ‘The Cinematic Dream-Work of Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957)’, in Sabbadini, A. (ed.) (2003) The Couch and The Silver Screen: Psychoanalytic Reflections on European Cinema, Hove: Brunner-Routledge, pp. 181–203; p. 198; Cowie references French, P. and French, K. (1995) Wild Strawberries, London: BFI, p. 23.
Greenberg, H. R. ‘The Rags of Time’, in Kaminsky, Hill (eds.), op.cit, pp. 179–194; p. 184.
Johns Blackwell, M. (1997) Gender and Representation in the Films of Ingmar Bergman, Columbia, SC: Camden House, pp. 199–200.
Bergom-Larsson, M. (1978) Film in Sweden: Ingmar Bergman and Society, translated by Barrie Selman, London: Tantivity Press, p. 21.
Bergman, I. (1995) Images: My Life in Film, translated by Marianne Ruuth, London: Faber and Faber (originally published 1990), p. 22.
Steene, B. (1968) Ingmar Bergman, Boston: Twayne, p. 71.
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© 2015 Dan Williams
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Williams, D. (2015). From Freud to Klein, and Wild Strawberries. In: Klein, Sartre and Imagination in the Films of Ingmar Bergman. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137471987_2
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