Journal ofthe History of the Behavioral Sciences Volume $2. January 1996 MELANIE KLEIN AND ANNA FREUD: THE DISCOURSE OF THE EARLY DISPUTE RUSSELL VINER Divisions in the field of the psychoanalysis of children can be traced to a dispute over the infantile super-ego between the theorists Melanie Klein and Anna Freud begin ning in 1927. These divisions are understood within the analytic world as the result of scientific disputation between alternative valid theories. An examination of the language, claims, and epistemology of Klein’s and Freud's publications in 1927 that marked the public commencement of the conflict, reveals a personalized discourse in which authority was derived from the allegiance, experience, and personal analytic standing of the contestants as much as from theoretical insight, The structure and rhetoric of the debate suggest that, rather than terminating the dispute, the publica~ tions of 1927 served to encourage professionalization in child analysis and establish ‘Anna Freud and Melanie Klein as authoritative alternative theorists Child psycho-analysis in the 1990s remains a field without conceptual unity, dominated since 1927 by a conflict between the two dominant schools founded by the early child analysts, Melanie Klein and Anna Freud. In response to the publication by Anna Freud of a critique of Klein in her early 1927 monograph, Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis, Melanie Klein published an extremely critical rebuttal in the May 1927 issue of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.' This exchange ex- posed the conflicting and contradictory nature of Klein’s and Anna Freud’s conceptions of the mind of the child, and the schools founded by the two theorists remain divided today on major aspects of theory and technique. The only presently available histories of child analysis derive from the traditions of the two schools as derived from the recollections of their founder. Such histories are of limited historical value, in that they tell of the natural emergence of modern analytic method, privileging certain analytic ideas and personalities as a result of the authors’ analytic allegiances. Serving professional rather than historical purposes, these histories of child analysis are concerned most to establish the primacy of the founder of that school, and the position of that school within the orthodox tradition that began with Sigmund Freud’s analysis of Little Hans in 1909.7 The explanations of the enduring conflict between Melanie Klein and Anna Freud offered by these histories are predicated upon assumptions of the scientific nature of psycho-analysis, with the lack of paradigmatic unity in the field seen as the result of an objective debate between alternative scientific theories. Not surprisingly in the psychoanalytic field, analytic interpretations of the behavior of historical actors accom- pany such positivist explanations; for example, recent biographies of both Anna Freud and Melanie Klein offer explanations of the technique and careers of their subject in terms of the childhood and family experiences of these analysts of children.? Such privileged explanations of the early child analysis debate in terms of objec- tive science or by analytic scrutiny, are unlikely to yield historical understanding of the actors and discourses involved in the early child analysis dispute. The history of child analysis has been of little interest to historians from outside the analytic milieu, and Russet Viner is @ pediatrician and medical historian working at the Cambridge Wellcome Unit ‘for the History of Medicine, Correspondence address: Clare College, Cambridge CB2 1TL England.MELANIE KLEIN AND ANNA FREUD 5 an examination of the epistemology, language, and context of the original dispute has not been attempted; however, such a history promises a more meaningful understand- ing of the origins of the enduring divisions in child analysis than is presently available. Tue Pre-History or tHe DispuTe Itis appropriate here to examine the events leading up to the 1927 debate on child analysis. Freud's publication of Little Hans in 1909 is the first known analysis of a child, and became the reference point for all following analyses of children. Freud wished to gain supporting evidence for his theories on infantile sexuality, and it was the presence of the child’s father as the proximate analyst that allowed Freud to overcome the fears of the time regarding the analysis of children. It was only because the authority of a father and of a physician were united in a single person, and because in him both affectionate care and scientific interest were combined, that it was possible in this one instance to apply the method to a use to which it would not have otherwise have lent itself.* Little Hans granted authority to analysts to over-ride their fears that rummaging in the supposedly fragile unconscious of a child could result in disaster, although Freud’s preconditions initially limited child analysis to the children of analysts or analysands. While Melanie Klein and Anna Freud were to later discard Freud’s restrictions and ex- tend child analysis outside the analytic milieu, identity with Freud’s Little Hans tech- nique was to be an important weapon in the 1927 child analysis dispute. The first to systematically analyze children was Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, who began work with children in Vienna soon after Little Hans, publishing her work as The Tech- nique of Child Analysis in 1920. Seeing the analysis of children as primarily educational and normative, Hug-Hellmuth denied that analysis analagous to adult methods was possi- ble in young children, and embargoed penetration of the depths of childhood neurosis. Initially gaining the enthusiastic support of Sigmund Freud, who recommended her technique for the upbringing of his grandson Ernst, this reclusive woman founded no school around her technique. Her later years were clouded by accusations of fraud con- cerning her publication of A Young Girl's Diary, the purported anonymous diary of a teenage girl which seemed to confirm analytic theories about the sexual development of children, and by her sensational murder by her nephew and analysand in 1924. Re- cent scholarship has sought to claim a more prominent place for Hug-Hellmuth in the history of child analysis, and has raised suggestions of the suppression of her memory by her successors Klein and Anna Freud.* The influence of her work on that of Melanie Klein and Anna Freud is difficult to assess, due to the resemblance between the work of Hug-Hellmuth and Anna Freud, and the use of this resemblance by Klein in the dispute with Anna Freud. While both Klein and Anna Freud were present at the presentation of Hug-Hellmuth’s work in The Hague Psycho-Analytic Congress in 1920, both later denied any debt to this early Viennese child analyst. ‘Commencing the analysis of children from the end of the Great War, Melanie Klein claimed to have arrived at very different conclusions from Hug-Hellmuth as early as 1921. Claiming that an educational element was incompatible with true analysis, and that the Oedipus complex, which she dated two years earlier than Freud himself, should be analyzed as deeply as possible, Klein built a technique of child analysis between 1922 and 1926 in Berlin where she had the support of the influential president of the local Psycho-Analytic Society, Karl Abraham." Klein's work was also highly regarded in Ernest6 RUSSELL VINER Jones’ British Psycho-Analytic Society, and after the death of Abraham, Klein moved to the England that she saw as fertile ground for the creation of her school of child analysis in late 1926. Anna Freud recalled that her entry into child analysis was a response to Freud’s call in 1918 to extend psycho-analysis into new fields after the war, and during her analytic training in the early 1920s, formed an informal study group in child analysis with the pedagogues August Aichhorn and Siegfried Bernfeld.’ With the foundation of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in 1925, Anna began a series of lectures on child analysis, a weekly course in Psychoanalytic Pedagogy for trainee analysts, teachers, and social workers, and published a journal with Bernfeld and Aichhorn, the Zeitschrift fiir Psychoanalytische Péidagogik.* From 1924, Anna Freud also took on considerable pro- fessional responsibilities, becoming Secretary of the new Vienna Institute and joining the inner circle of advisors to her ailing father While both women attended the 1920 Hague presentation on child analysis by Hug- Hellmuth, the first known professional contact between Klein and Anna Freud occurred in Berlin in December 1924, when Klein was invited to present her work to the Vienna Psycho-Analytic Society. Klein reported being very well received in Vienna; however, her work was received with great scepticism by Anna Freud’s discussion group on child analysis.’ Prior to the exchanges of early 1927 that are the subject of this examination, neither Melanie Klein nor Anna Freud had expressed their reservations concerning their rival in public, aside from a brief critique of Klein’s view of delinquency as a form of neurosis in Aichorn’s 1925 book, Wayward Youth.'® Melanie Klein had not long arrived in England when Anna Freud formalized the conflict between the two theorists by the release of her Viennese lecture series as Jn- troduction to the Technique of Child Analysis in early 1927, incorporating strong criticisms of Klein’s technique. After Freud’s presentation of her method to the Berlin Psycho-Analytic Society on 19 March 1927, where a written contribution by Melanie Klein was not discussed, Klein asked Ernest Jones to organize an English forum for her to reply to Anna Freud's critique. The resultant May Symposium on Child Analysis of the British Psycho-Analytic Society, published in the August issue of the British con- trolled International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, presented a strong rebuttal and critique of Anna Freud’s method by Klein and five other members of the British Society."' Subse- quent papers presented by Melanie Klein and Anna Freud at the September Tenth In- ternational Psycho-Analytic Congress in Innsbruck and over the next decade continued the pattern of the original exchange, serving to further demarcate the differences between the two theorists rather than to close the debate. The events of early 1927 are significant as the first public declaration of the conflict between the two theorists, although Klein and Freud had recognized the other as an opponent since at least late 1924. The events of 1927 also served to expose and activate the networks of allies gained by Anna Freud and Melanie Klein since the mid 1920s, networks that would expand in the 1930s into the Kleinian and Freudian schools of child analysis. An examination of the language, arguments, and epistemological basis of the rival claims in the original 1927 publications, and the corresponding activity within the supportive networks allied with each therapist, promises an understanding of the nature of child analysis unavailable to existing histories of child analysis. METHODS AND TECHNIQUE In this dispute, Anna Freud and Melanie Klein revealed markedly divergent views on the nature of the mind of the child and on the suitability of children for psycho-MELANIE KLEIN AND ANNA FREUD 7 analysis. While both claimed to extend adult psycho-analysis to the child, fundamen- tally opposed concepts of the strength of the super-ego in small children led to the emer- gence of contradictory techniques in almost all elements of the analysis of children. Klein postulated a super-ego of great strength and severity as the basis of childhood neurosis. While control of the punitive nature of this super-ego was the aim of child analysis, the very strength of this area of the child’s mind allowed the child to withstand a full and deep analysis of the adult model. She thus saw child analysis as a direct transla~ tion of the classical adult technique, involving the development of a transference neurosis between the child and the analyst, and requiring of the analyst the same techniques and discipline as the treatment of adults. In this model, the interpretation of free play during the sessions was directly substituted for the adult technique of free association, and the child’s relationship with its parents fully explored. Seeing all children as potentially suitable for analysis, Klein repudiated any normative role for the therapist, and rejected a role for the parents in the treatment of their child. Anna Freud, on the contrary, believed the super-ego of a child to be weak and immature, and the child too dependent on its parents to tolerate the full analysis of the child-parent relationship. She thus saw child analysis as aiming to reinforce rather than dampen the strength of the super-ego. Rejecting the possibility of transference in a child still so dependent on its primary love-objects (parents), and having reservations about the sexual interpretation of much of a child’s play, Anna Freud proposed a normative role for the therapist, whose aim was to become a part of the child's super- ego and to entice the child into analysis. As her technique required the active support of the parents and the development of a positive relationship with the child, Anna Freud saw child analysis as limited at this stage to the children of analysts or those in analysis themselves. Tue FuNcTION oF THE DisPUTE Given the fundamental opposition in their conception of the strength of the infan- tile super-ego, it is not surprising that Melanie Klein and Anna Freud saw each others’ technique as fatally flawed and potentially dangerous. While the exchange of publica- tions in early 1927 was intended to debate the merits of the strong versus weak super- ego techniques, an examination of the form of the debate and of the representation of the contesting therapists, suggests that professional and personal objectives accom- panied the scientific motor of the debate. The confrontational nature of Anna Freud’s book, taking the form of a dialectic with a putative Klein, contrasting each element of her new technique with Klein’s recorded views on the subject, reveals that Anna Freud perceived her technique as one that must necessarily oppose, and be seen as opposed to, that of Klein. This disputational element is enhanced by her publication of these dialectics in the form of lectures to a sceptical audience, one that needed to be convinced of the superiority of Anna’s ideas over those of Klein. This audience is left in no doubt of the fundamental and irresolvable disagreements between Klein and Freud on all of the essential elements of analysis and their applicability to children, and on the necessity of choosing between the two tech- niques. Klein’s answer in the May Symposium is equally confrontational, recognizing no common ground with Anna Freud. Klein claims “All the means which we should regard as incorrect in the analysis of adults are especially stressed by Anna Freud as valuable in analysing children.”8 RUSSELL VINER The public depiction of Melanie Klein and Anna Freud as authoritative opposing theorists had implications for the formal structure and status of the new specialty of child analysis, and can be seen as part of the professionalization process in the schools of child analysis that Klein and Freud built around themselves from the late 1920s. Melanie Klein made no secret of her plans for the “establishment and expansion” of child analysis, admitting her ambitions for an English school to Ernest Jones in late 1926: A viable analytic basis, not only for my work but also for working for the establish- ment and expansion of child analysis seems to me to be given here. That which Iwas able to begin in Berlin, with the fervent and active support of Abraham, could in the most beautiful way be contrived and completed in London, if you will stand by me. I could make my contribution to the psycho-analysis movement, which I fervently desire, in London just as well as in Berlin." Others have previously suggested that Anna’s 1927 book was written to serve as ‘a manual for a school of child analysis, and the announcement of fundamental opposi- tion to Klein inherent in this publication can be seen as part of the process of building a school of child analysis in Vienna." This professionalization process for Anna Freud had already included the formation of a training system of seminars, the publication of a journal, and lectures on the history of child analysis. Melanie Klein and the British Society were to institute similar training schemes in the early 1930s. The debate and publications in 1927 served to formalize and articulate a conflict that had been building since at least the mid 1920s. While the main intent of the debate was to contest the technique of the rival therapist, the 1927 publications also served a professional purpose, functioning as a declaration by both sides of fundamental op- position and establishing the image of Klein and Freud as contesting authoritative therapists. AUTHORITY AND EPISTEMOLOGY The 1927 discussions were portrayed by Klein and Freud as an objective debate between authorities on points of theory and technique, and are generally understood in this fashion within the analytic community; however, an examination of the language of the 1927 debate reveals an experiential epistemology, where the source of authority for theory and practice lay with the experience of the analyst and their adherence to Freudian orthodoxy, rather than in theoretical insight, and where arguments were con- structed as much around the personal analytic soundness of the rival theorists as in terms of rival concepts of the infantile super-ego. Experience The principle criterion for the acceptability of knowledge in the debate was agreed by both sides to be the narrated experience of the contesting child analysts, rather than objective observational evidence or theoretical speculation. Both Melanie Klein and Anna Freud acknowledged that objective evidence played only a minor role in the develop- ment of child analysis technique, with anecdotal and experiential knowledge underpin- ning their techniques: “we fall short of many scientific requirements and obtain our material where we can find it—much as we do in ordinary life if we wish to acquire detailed knowledge of another person.” The anecdotal nature of disputation in child analysis was contrasted unfavorably with the impartial discourse of adult psychoanalysis by the British adult analyst Edward Glover:MELANIE KLEIN AND ANNA FREUD 9 Whilst psycho-analysts are never lacking in vigour when it is necessary to defend analytic principles against encroachment from without or within the movement, their attitudes on most subjects of scientific discussion is characterised by a con- spicuous absence of emotional bias. On one or two matters, however, it would ap- pear that absence of empirical data sufficient to closure discussion gives rise to a more than usually animated expression of personal opinion. I imagine that this is especially true of the subject of child analysis."® This experiential epistemology is illustrated by the debate over Klein’s interpreta- tion of a child’s actions during play. Anna Freud reproved Melanie Klein for the “assump- tion” that child’s play is equivalent to the free association of the adult patient, and for seeking to interpret “each single move in the play,” suggesting that much of play “is open to harmless interpretations.”'” Regardless of the arguments Klein used to under- pin her play technique, Freud asserted that experience alone must settle the question; “an exchange of theoretical arguments does not easily settle the question of whether it is justified to equate the child’s play actions with the adult’s free associations. The issue obviously must be left to be reviewed in the light of practical experience.” In reply, Klein emphasized the authority of her long experience in contrast to Anna Freud’s “theoretical statement which contradicts practical experience.” From what my own experience has taught me, then, I really can only emphatically combat Anna Freud’s statement that both the methods used in adult analysis (namely free association and the interpretation of the transference reactions), in order to investigate the patient’s early childhood, fail us in analysing children.'® Similar claims for experiental authority are evident in the correspondence on child analysis between Ernest Jones and Sigmund Freud, Jones dismissed Anna’s conclusions as “hasty” and based upon “such a slender basis of experience,” concluding that the differences between the two theorists “will be decided by experience, and not by argu- ment.””° In his defense of his daughter, Sigmund Freud also emphasized the heuristic nature of progress in child analysis; “In reality, Anna’s views on child analysis are in- dependent of mine; I share her views, but she has developed them out of her indepen- dent experience.””" The use of personal experience as a criterion for the acceptability of knowledge in the debate focused attention firmly upon the persons of the contesting therapists as much as upon their techniques; consequently, as will be shown in the following sec- tions, doctrinal differences were contested within a personalized discourse of orthodoxy, allegiance, and personal analytic standing. Orthodoxy and Allegiance In the personalized epistemology of the debate, the adherence of Melanie Klein and Anna Freud to orthodox Freudian theory was claimed as an alternate source of authority, especially by Klein and her supporters. Anna Freud clearly recognized that criticism of her new technique would be situated within a debate on the validity of departures from the ideas of Sigmund Freud. Admitting that “The procedures I presented to you contradict at too many points the rules of psycho-analytic technique as laid down for us. in the past,” Anna understood that the departures of her technique from classical method identified her with schismatic techniques previously repudiated by the analytic movement. 1 am prepared for the practising analysts among you to say, after what they have heard here, that my methods with children are so different that they cannot be