Infant Observation

International Journal of Infant Observation and Its Applications

ISSN: 1369-8036 (Print) 1745-8943 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/riob20

Melanie Klein and infant observation

Susan Sherwin-White & Trudy Klauber

To cite this article: Susan Sherwin-White & Trudy Klauber (2017): Melanie Klein and infant
observation, Infant Observation, DOI: 10.1080/13698036.2017.1311235

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Published online: 28 Apr 2017.

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Infant Observation, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/13698036.2017.1311235

Melanie Klein and infant observation

Susan Sherwin-White† and Trudy Klauber*
The author (the late Susan Sherwin-White) uses evidence of Melanie Klein’s
interest in babies and young children in unpublished notes in the archive as
well as her publications. Klein uses her observations to infer what happens in
children’s minds and their internal worlds. She used her findings alongside her
analyses of children to develop her ‘theoretical conclusions’ about psychic
development from the earliest weeks of life. Her revolutionary developments of
psychoanalytic theory have been wrongly attributed to her dominant interest in
internal life and the character of babies and children without very much
attention to external reality. This ground-breaking paper makes it clear that
Klein was extremely interested in what could be seen and felt by close
observation of their behaviour and play; she repeatedly emphasized the
importance of consistent, loving care in healthy development. The author’s
meticulous research gives a fascinating and enlightening account of Klein’s
interest in the links she perceived between the way children were treated and
their happiness, ability to trust and to develop well. This posthumous paper is
a wonderful addition to our knowledge of Klein’s understanding of primitive
mental states and of the significance of the contribution of both external and
internal factors to healthy development.
Keywords: Melanie Klein; early infancy; direct observation; external life; mental
development; attachment; happiness

As a remnant from pre-analytic days, a tendency persisted in psychoanalytic theory

to consider the infant mainly from the biological and physiological point of view;
psychologically speaking, he has been largely regarded as the embodiment of
phases, fixation points, instincts, etc. Theoretical conclusions, essential to the
development of theory, have been preserved in vacuo, as it were, because as a
rule they have not been applied to the infant as a living organism – which
means psychologically as well as biologically. Such rigid adhering to certain

*Email: tklauber@tavi-port.nhs.uk, tklauber@tavi-port.ac.uk

†
Deceased.
© 2017 Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust
2 S. Sherwin-White and T. Klauber

fixed concepts without regard to observable facts is bound to lead in a retrograde

direction (Klein, 1944, p. 770).
Klein is referring to a certain psychoanalytical blindness to investigating a
baby’s possible psychological reactions to the circumstances of his everyday
life and to accepting that from the start a baby is a little human being in
his or her own right (cf. 1936a, pp. 43–44; 1936b, p. 297: see below). As
Klein noted (1944, pp. 770–771), this was in spite of Freud’s own recog-
nition of complicated psychic processes at work in infants, exemplified in
his observation of his 18-month grandson playing the cotton-reel game
(1920, pp. 14–17), and the powerful impact of sibling rivalry on the
arrival of a new baby (1933 pp. 157–158; cf. Sherwin-White, 2007).
Despite Freud’s work on motivation in early infant emotional behaviour
(for example, linking fear of poisoning to the process of weaning: 1933,
p. 157), the tendency nevertheless had been to disregard this phase of life
for various reasons, mainly theoretical (and conservative), checking psycho-
analysts’ capacity at least to raise interesting questions about the development
of psychic life, in the early years. By the time of her 1944 paper in the so-
called Controversial Discussions between Klein, Anna Freud and their
respective followers at the British Psycho-Analytic Society, Klein had been
working with very young children for over two decades. She was, with her
close colleagues in England, concerned about the absence of recognition of
the importance of psychic life from the earliest postnatal period. At issue in
1944 was not only Klein’s theory about the first year of life and young
child analysis, but also the evidential value and potential contribution of
early infant observations; a debate over the status of infant observation as
research evidence that continues today (see e.g. Rustin, 1997, 2002).
Recent books on infant observation have made use of Klein’s theoretical views
on the first year of an infant’s emotional development, its early object relations
from soon after birth and the evolving picture of the Kleinian baby’s struggle
through a persecutory phase to tackling a ‘depressive’ phase of feelings of guilt,
loss, sadness and reparative resolving of relations first to mother, father (and
siblings) and others (e.g. Briggs, 2002; Miller, Rustin, Rustin, & Shuttleworth,
1991; Reid, 1997). But Klein’s actual use of baby observations, and the value
she placed on close observation of infants as a potential source of data, has been
by-passed. There are various reasons for this. One is that some of the sources
have not been known to those writing about the development of ‘infant obser-
vation’ (see below). Additionally, Klein’s 1944 paper, which contains quite con-
siderable baby observational material, was not published until 1991, and even
then, was accessible only to those excavating the large and magisterial volume
The Freud-Klein controversies 1941–1945 (King & Steiner, 1991). Nonetheless
Klein’s 1952 paper, ‘On observing the behaviour of young infants’ (1952b),
which is easily accessible, does give several illuminating vignettes from nine
infants, but does not seem to have attracted attention.
 Infant Observation 3

Today, infant observation is an integral part of pre-clinical training, for

example, of psychoanalytical child and adolescent and adult psychotherapists
and of adult and child psychoanalysts. The practice is (varyingly) deemed valu-
able by other professionals (e.g. clinical child psychologists, social workers,
nursery school teachers, health visitors). Currently, infant observation usually
involves systematic weekly observation of an infant from birth (or soon after)
for an hour once a week for one or two years. Detailed descriptive reports of
the observation are written up for seminar discussion. The observer has to nego-
tiate and keep to the (not so easy to establish) role of neutral observer, not friend,
of the family. This takes a lot of trust and understanding but gives a very privi-
leged opportunity to observe with continuity the infant’s progression and
relation with mother, father, siblings and other family members, honing the
observational skills of the observer. The possible meanings of the observation
(and the feelings/transference in the observer) are then discussed in a weekly
seminar.
What is given attention by Klein is actual observational material, gathered
herself and from mothers she knew. This relies upon direct observations during,
for example, the first and second years of life, rather than inference from slightly
older children’s early, often primitive, emotional states of mind when in psycho-
analytic treatment. They have a unique value and interest as very early examples of
infant observation, and for the quality of the understanding they evinced. It
becomes clear that at least from the early 1930s, Klein (and her colleagues)
pursued the potential usefulness of the observation of infants for additional data
on their psychic functioning and interactions with the mother. Klein also
sought possible corroboration for her theory in the complex mental functioning
and internal life of infants from early on.
Klein’s public emphasis on the potential of infant observation was maintained
over a number of years, beginning in 1935 with a public lecture on ‘Weaning’
given in a series of five lectures (see below). Merrill Middlemore was another lec-
turer.1 Klein followed up this development in her own three lectures on ‘Psycho-
analysis and normal development’, delivered to an audience at the Institute of
Education, London University in 1939. They were presented in the Joseph
Payne lecture series. Payne was a nineteenth-century teacher and educationalist
critic of current education (especially boys’ public schools). These lectures are pre-
served (and available) in the Wellcome archive (PP/KLE/C. 51).
Klein’s lectures, to a lay audience, were delivered in untechnical, accessible
language, addressing new perspectives in what seems a pretty digestible manner
for a non-psychoanalytic audience (or, one imagines, largely so). An amount of
the material and specific vignettes of infants were to be re-used subsequently,
for example, in Klein’s 1944 paper (see below) and her 1952 article ‘On the be-
haviour of young infants’ (1952b), in which several infant vignettes are repeated
(e.g. Infants B and C). Klein’s (1957) paper to a symposium on ‘Direct Child
Observation’ at the Paris Congress (PP/KLE/C. 71) dealt mainly with the role
4 S. Sherwin-White and T. Klauber

of non-verbal (and often unconscious) ‘language’ in the training and work of psy-
choanalysts. The Klein archive also possesses a comparatively large file of Klein’s
own observations, and descriptive reports of her grandchildren as infants (Michael,
born 1937; Diana, born 1939; and Hazel, born 1943), amounting to nearly 400
pages (PP/KLE/A.49), PP/KLE/A.50). These reports are restricted for a number
more decades, so the material used here is only from the vignettes appearing in
the 1939 and 1952 (see note 1) papers. In this series, Merrill Middlemore,
author of The nursing couple published in 1941, cited the work of the Austrian psy-
chologist, Charlotte Bühler, The First Year of Life, 1931, for her series of infant
observations (1936a, pp. 57–58). But it is the case that Klein made detailed obser-
vations of her grandchildren, alongside those she gathered from others (friends/
colleagues/relations), and that she had a very close relation to her grandchildren,
as grandmothers tend to do. What needs, perhaps, further emphasis is that here is
a valuable resource that in due course should be researched properly.
This article concentrates on Klein’s actual observations of infants, her
interpretations of these and others’ observations, her views of the importance of
the mother’s emotional rapport with her baby, and also the role of the former’s
unconscious states of mind in the development of what would now be called a
mother’s attachment to or bonding with her baby. Klein was, of course, well
aware of the obvious pitfall: – ‘ … a baby can’t tell us what’s wrong because he
can’t talk’ (1944, p. 774; 1952b, p. 94); even if a baby at 4–6 months could
talk, which is impossible, he still would not be able to say what is the matter
because much would be unconscious and unknowable, just as for the young chil-
dren Klein saw clinically. It is matter of attunement to, and comprehension of
non- and pre-verbal communication, of body language and perception of the
most fleeting expressions as having potential meanings, and an understanding
of unconscious processes.
Vignettes are given relating to relevant themes, such as an infant’s experiences
of loss and separation (including night terrors), the emotions accompanying
such experiences, and how these may be responded to, and in due course
coped with; the baby’s expression of a range of emotions, including anger and
rage, sadness, happy states, fun, love, frustration and grief, and an incipient
sense of play. Klein was aware that in describing a baby’s emotional reactions
there was a danger of using anachronistic language. Klein observes the infant’s
active use of his developing ‘skills’ as assets to counter inevitable separations
from his mother, the baby’s first and primary object, and the process this may
often take.

Klein’s observations: a selection of vignettes

She had an extraordinary way of being in contact with babies and young children. One
of my sons was about six months old when she died so she knew him quite well as a small
 Infant Observation 5
baby. I remember when he was under three months she would just sit and have long
conversations. Really one had a feeling they were conversing. [Hanna Segal, interviewed
by Daniel Pick (2001, p. 6)]
This anecdotal evidence from Hanna Segal, a close colleague, emphasizes Klein’s
intuitive facility for ‘talking’ to (and establishing an empathic contact with) very
young babies. It is first shown in Klein’s play with her grandson (see below).
This is just one example of Klein’s capacity imaginatively to try to see things
from the infant’s point of view. The infant’s earliest relations with his mother,
or his first object, are discussed to start with. Klein insisted that an infant’s very
early relation to his mother was about more than satisfaction of hunger:
To the gratification of sucking are added the many elements which enter into the infant’s
relation with the mother. For, as Mrs Isaacs has described to you in more detail, the inter-
est in the mother’s face, the touch of her hands and the baby’s pleasure in touching her
breast, her face and her hands – all these are manifestations of a relation with the
mother going far beyond the actual alleviation of hunger. (PP/KLE/51, Lecture 2, part
2, ‘The role of feelings of sadness and loss in the young child’s emotional life’, p. 2)

That is to say, there is very early on a relationship with mother, based on more
than bodily need, that is, affection:
As early as this [‘at least by the beginning of the second month’] the infant shows an
interest in the mother over and above the feeding process; often he interrupts his
sucking to look at her face, to smile at her, to cuddle against her breast, to play with
it; and his interest even extends beyond her person to other objects. The close under-
standing and contact between mother and child even at this early stage, the way in
which the infant reacts and responds to the mother’s attitude and feelings, the love
and interest which he shows, constitute an object relation. No mother who has
enjoyed feeding her children would doubt this, and many nurses and general prac-
titioners share this view. (1944, p. 755)

Here Klein is pointing to the clear evidence of a baby’s emotional relationship with
his mother – and you did not need to be a mother to know this. Klein uses a fas-
cinating example of an observation of her grandson, which is about more than the
attempt reciprocally to feed:
We can also observe that the infant makes attempts to feed the mother in return for her
feeding him. There are various things he expresses by putting his finger into her mouth.
Sometimes he clearly wishes to explore the mouth, e.g. an infant of five months to whom I
made noises corresponding to his own attempts to babble watched me with the greatest
delight and interest and suddenly, while the sound came out of my mouth, he put his
finger into my mouth – quite obviously, an attempt to fetch the sounds out of it. At
other times an infant indicates his wish for his mother to suck his finger or even playfully
to bite it, which is partly an attempt to feed her. A little later on many an infant actually
tries to feed his mother with his spoon. I am not concerned here with the extent to which
6 S. Sherwin-White and T. Klauber
the child imitates his mother, which no doubt he does; but my main point is that this way
he expresses his own feelings of love and gratitude towards her and his desire to feed her
and give her pleasure as she gives him pleasure by feeding him. (PP/KLE/C. 51, 1944,
Lecture 3, ‘The role of feelings of sadness and loss in the young child’s emotional life,
part 2’, pp. 6–7, re-used in 1944, p. 778)

Klein is asserting the evidence observed for an infant’s ways of expressing love to
his mother in the early feeding situation. But in this example, what Klein also
records is having a ‘conversation’ with her grandson, much as some 20 years
later Segal was to witness with her own son. Of particular interest is Klein’s obser-
vation en passant about the baby’s attempt quite literally to grasp her words, which
evidently at this very early stage are understandably felt to be what might be called
‘mouth’ or oral objects, concrete things, somewhat analogous to the symbolic
equation of words with things (see e.g. Maiello, 1995; Rey, 1986).
One of Klein’s objectives, apart from arguing for her hypothesis of object
relations from very early on, was to demonstrate the variety of emotions from
positive to negative filling an infant (their strength already pointed out by
Freud). She had already embellished Freud’s observation of the 18-month-old
boy with the cotton-reel work on anxiety over the separation from mother,
adding the dimensions of grief and reparation. Klein traced quite carefully
through observation how play can help an infant develop the capacity to deal
better with a mother’s absence, so that its traumatic character is lessened and
can be accommodated to a greater or lesser extent. Klein gave a nuanced descrip-
tion from observations in 1939. The peek-a-boo game Klein illustrated by an
observation from her grandson (reproduced verbatim in 1944, along with some
other examples):
There are various typical forms of play similar to the one of the cotton-reel game. For
instance, it is a general observation that children, sometimes even before the second half
of the first year, enjoy throwing things out of the pram again and again, and expect them
back. I observed a variation of this play in an infant of ten months who had recently
begun to crawl. He was indefatigable in throwing a toy away from himself and then
getting hold of it by crawling towards it. I was told that he had started this play
about two months earlier when he made his first attempts to move himself forward …

Already in the fifth or sixth month many infants respond with pleasure to ‘peep-bo’; and
I have seen infants playing this actively by pulling the blanket over the head and off again
as early as seven months. I observed an infant with whom the mother made a bedtime
ritual of this game, thus leaving the child to go to sleep in a happy mood, which suggests
that the repetition of such experiences is an important factor in helping the child to over-
come his feelings of loss and grief. Another typical play which I found to be a great help
and comfort to young children is to part from the child at bedtime saying ‘bye-bye’ and
waving, leaving the room slowly, as it were disappearing gradually. I was able to observe
repeatedly the effect of such experience on the infant referred to above in daytime as
 Infant Observation 7
well. Sometimes when the mother was about to leave the room, a fleeting expression of
sadness came into the child’s eyes, or she seemed near crying. But when the mother
waved to her and said ‘bye-bye’, she appeared comforted and went on with her play
activities. I saw her at the age between ten and eleven months practising again and
again the gesture of waving, and it was clear that the practice itself, even before she
could actually achieve the gesture, had become a source of interest and comfort to
her. ‘Bye-bye’ was also one of her first words. [PP/KLE/C. 51, 1944, Lecture 3, ‘The
role of feelings of sadness and loss in the young child’s emotional life’ (Part II), 8–10:
repeated almost verbatim 1944, pp. 778–779]

Apart from the interest of the observations, this quotation also reflects how alert
Klein as observer is (and needed to be) to transitory expressions of emotion, as
her use of ‘fleeting’ indicates here.

Loss, separation and the symptom of night terrors

In her 1939 lecture (and in 1944), Klein continued her objective to demystify and
give reasons for the role of loss and accompanying emotions for the infant (grief,
fear, terror, panic). She states that while pavor nocturnus in older children is gen-
erally known as a symptom of infantile neurosis, night terrors in infants had
attracted scant attention from both analytic and non-analytic observers, in spite
of its quite regular occurrence (1944, p. 771). Klein also noted that this affected
infants who usually slept well if in strange surroundings, or even suddenly,
without obvious cause, could wake up in terror. She gave the following vignette,
which also stressed the importance of close observation:
A striking instance of the emotions underlying such disturbances of sleep was reported
to me by a mother. She said that she found her baby daughter, who was as a rule happy
and slept well, sobbing in her sleep at the age of ten months. She had observed this once
or twice before. The evident feelings of sadness shown in this case contribute also to
night terrors and other disturbances of sleep.
Feelings of sadness and fear of loss show themselves in many ways in infants if we only
consider his attitudes sufficiently from that angle. For instance, fear of loss plays a great
part in the severe though possibly short disturbance in the infant’s relation to his
mother, the complete withdrawal from her, which occurs in certain situations of
anxiety, usually stimulated by the mother’s absence. Provided we can fully appreciate
the vacant look of the eyes, the movements of the body, the expression of the features,
we shall see the loss of contact, the alteration in the infant’s relation to his mother. We
must also remember that after such an anxiety situation, though the child has already
calmed down, the next feed is often disturbed.

The infant girl who sobbed in her sleep when she was ten years old, when she was five
months old had been left crying longer than usual and was then found in what her
mother described as a ‘hysterical’ state. She looked terrified, and the mother said she
8 S. Sherwin-White and T. Klauber
had no doubt that the child was frightened of her because she had not come when the
child expected her. It took the child some time before she seemed to recognise the
mother and re-established contact with her. What made this instance, which is quite
an ordinary one, so interesting to me is that the facts which underlie such states were
so clearly observable that the mother could not help recognising them. I have made
similar observations on several infants at different states from a few months onwards.
[PP/KLE/C/ 51, 1939, ‘The role of feelings of sadness and loss in the young child’s
emotional life’ (Part 1), pp. 9–11, cf. 1944, pp. 771–772]

Here, for Klein, the infant was dominated by her unconscious split of her internal
mother into a ‘bad’, terrifying being, hence her temporary non-recognition of her
actual mother. Another vignette: this is chosen to show how the infant, despite or
because of his state of mind, can summon up ways to try to deal with a worst-case
scenario:
I have seen a few infants, when they had woken with anxiety, using all their little tricks
which they knew delighted the mother to keep her by their side. In one case an infant of
ten months had woken with night terror, and the attempts on the part of her mother to
put her to sleep were not successful. Every time the mother turned out the light, the little
girl cried again with unmistakable signs of anxiety. When the light was turned on once
more, she clapped her hands, smiled, and did everything which she knew was pleasing to
her mother. The anxiety behind this liveliness was quite apparent, as this playfulness and
cheerfulness were different from the usual happy mood with which they were associated
in daytime; the infant was obviously trying to avoid being exposed once more to anxiety.
Actually the mother decided to play with the child and to make her feel more comfor-
table, and very soon the little girl went happily to sleep again.

In my view an infant knows intuitively that his smile and other signs of affection and
happiness produce happiness and pleasure in the mother and evoke similar responses
from her … one has only to watch the expression on an infant’s face when his smile
is not responded to and his attempts to please fail. The smile disappears, the light
fades from his eyes, and something akin to sorrow and anxiety creeps into his expression.
[PP/KLE/C/ 51, 1944, Lecture 3, ‘The role of feelings of sadness and loss in the young
child’s emotional life’ (Part II), 5–7: 1944, p. 777]

It would be possible to conclude, noting the differences in these two cases that the
latter infant had passed the extreme splitting of the former baby girl. While one
might wonder too what sort of dreams these little pre-verbal infants might have
been having, reflecting perhaps their fears, this seems unlikely as neuroscientists
tend to believe that the infant is not equipped to dream before the capacity to
imagine things visually and spatially develops rather later (Foulkes, 2002).
These vignettes reflect various different markers in the baby’s emotional develop-
ment and capacity to cope with the ‘losses’ or absences of mother, which are an
inevitable concomitant of growing up.
 Infant Observation 9

Klein chose an example of how an infant’s growing interest and attachment to

new things helps here; she had already spoken of the infant’s ability to be ‘quite
happy by himself’ in his waking periods from as early as the second month,
though these may be transitory moments for the baby:
Though he enjoys, as early as from the second month onwards, the company of his
mother and soon also of other people, he is in his waking periods also capable of
being quite happy by himself. The fleeting expressions on the infant’s face at
such times indicate that a good deal is going on in his mind, that the serenity –
if one may speak of that in such a young being – is not vacancy but part of his suc-
cessful adaptation to his external as well as to his internal world. Very important
things go on in the young infant in such states when he appears to be happy by
himself. As we know, such states of happiness by himself do not last long in very
young infants, and again and again the baby will wish to see his mother, or to
hear her voice or even her footsteps. I am not referring now to physical discomfort
which necessitates alleviation by the mother, but to the infant’s need to experience
from time to time the presence of his mother, to see signs of her love, even to
express his love: for these are the ways in which he, as it were, renews his relations
with her. For only for relatively short periods can he keep this relation alive without
her actual presence. (PP/KLE/C. 51, 1939b, Lecture 2, pp. 3–4)
Klein interpreted the importance of this (PP/KLE/C. 51, 1939b, Lecture 2, pp. 3–
4) in terms of how the establishment of this picture of a good mother in the
infant’s internal world is one of the preconditions for future happiness, and
crucial for the capacity to bear frustration and adversity. Klein explained how,
as the infant’s love for his mother and others (father, siblings) develops, ‘various
things gradually come to stand for the original loved thing – the nipple –
because in the baby’s mind to him they are similar to it: In this way, love and inter-
est are partly transferred from people to things which have come to stand for them
symbolically’ (PP/KLE/C. 51, 1939a, Lecture 1, p. 13). In this way Klein clearly
notes the baby’s incipient capacity for understanding symbols at some level. Klein
used observation of her grandson, ‘infant D’, to illustrate her thoughts about early
infant life and the infant’s developing interest in other objects or others:
The infant boy D showed at the age of three months a very strong and personal relation
to his toys, i.e. beads, wooden rings and rattle. He looked at them intently, touched
them again and again, took them into his mouth and listened to the noise they
made; he was angry with these toys and screamed when they were not in the position
he wanted; he was pleased and liked them once more when they were fixed for him
in the right position. His mother remarked, when he was four months old, that he
worked off a good deal of anger on his toys; on the other hand, they were also a con-
solation to him in feelings of distress. At times he stopped crying when they were
shown to him, and they also comforted him before going to sleep.
10 S. Sherwin-White and T. Klauber
In the fifth month he clearly distinguished between father, mother and the maid; he
showed this unmistakably in his look of recognition and in expecting certain types of
play from each of them. His personal relations were already very marked at this stage;
he had also developed a particular attitude towards his bottle. For instance, when it
was standing empty beside him on a table, he turned to it, making sounds, caressing
it and from time to time sucking the teat. From his facial expression, it could be gathered
that he was behaving towards the bottle in the same way as towards a loved person.
(1952b, p. 113)]

The subsequent section repeats Klein’s earlier description of 1939 of this same
baby:
I repeatedly observed a baby, aged about 9 months, who after his feed, and being quite
contented, looked in a loving way at the empty bottle which stood near and carried on
what could only be described as a conversation with it. He spoke to it, and then again
and again stopped, as if waiting for a reply. It was the same kind of babbling talk which
at this stage he often had with his mother – talk to which he actually expected her to
respond. Not long after this, he would extend much interest to a humming top,
being first attracted by its red knob, which he immediately sucked. This sucking
relationship, however, soon led to a great interest in the noise which the humming
top made, in its movement and in the way it could be made to spin. He soon gave
up his attempts to suck it, but his love and interest for the top remained. When he
was fifteen months old, it happened that another humming top, of which he was also
very fond, fell on the floor while he was playing with it, and came to bits. The child
was deeply distressed about this accident, even after the top had been together again,
and for a day or two did not even want to go near the toy-cupboard where it was
kept. (PP/KLE/C. 51, 1944, Lecture 3, p. 14; 1952b, p. 114)

As often, the observation comes first, followed by Klein’s interpretation. Klein

concluded that it was partly by symbol formation, as here in these sequences,
that it becomes possible for the infant to make relations with things that bear
some of the attributes of the people he loves and relates to, and so finds ‘new
objects’ (ibid., 14) on which to express or vent emotional reactions. At the end
of the excerpt, it is fear of damage he imagines having caused. Klein links the
anxiety over the broken (but mendable) top to persecutory and depressive feelings
of anxiety, and comments on his displacement of his interest to a number of new
objects:
I shall here only briefly introduce the important part symbol formation plays in all these
processes, as an essential means of extending love and interest from the primary objects
to new objects and further sources of gratification. We can observe in the infant that
together with the interest first in his mother’s breast and face the interest in other
objects, his rattle and various toys, develops and that he loves them. In my view these
toys symbolically come to stand first for his mother’s breast; and this view is
 Infant Observation 11
substantiated by the fact that the interest in his mother’s body precedes the discoveries
made of his own body. Very soon, however, the toys also come to stand symbolically for
parts of his own body. From at least the third month onwards the infant plays with his
limbs and toes, revealing an obvious interest and pleasure in his body. At five or six
months he begins various experimentative [sic] forms of play with objects which at
first symbolically stand for parts of his body but gradually acquire an interest in them-
selves. At this period the growing interest in the external world can easily be observed.
(1944, p. 782)

The emotional impact of an infant’s physical development; crawling,

standing, walking
Klein remarked on what she called ‘everyday observations’ how a baby’s achieve-
ments give joy to his parents, but also pointed out how the baby is aware of this
aspect too and also gains a little ‘say’ as a result:
But it is less commonly recognised that he also wishes by means of these achievements to
evoke love from his mother and to give her pleasure. How soon does he realise that his
smile delights his mother, attracts her attention, keeps her near him, and at times serves
this purpose better than his crying. There seems to be no doubt in analytic and non-ana-
lytic observers that when an infant cries, this is partly intended to bring his mother back
to him; but that his smile and expressions of love could have a similar purpose has been
less fully recognised. (PP/KLE/C. 51, 1944, Lecture 3, p. 5)

This was true, too, of an infant’s other physical developments (see also above):
When an infant is able first to sit up and then to stand in his cot, he can look at his
mother and father whenever he likes, and this in some sense brings him nearer to
them. This is still more the case when he is able to crawl and walk. The great psycho-
logical importance for the infant of standing, crawling and walking has been described
by a few analytic writers. My point here is that these achievements are the means of
regaining his lost objects as well as finding new objects in their stead, and thus
help the infant to overcome the depressive position. (PP/KLE/C. 51, 1944, Lecture
3, p. 12)

Klein then cited the example of the development of the peek-a-boo game at the
stage when the baby can crawl for the tossed away toy, and so ‘regain his lost
object by his own efforts’ (PP/KLE/C.51, 1939, Lecture 3, p. 12). Klein re-
used this twice, indicating the importance of the otherwise quite mundane obser-
vation for her insistence on the psychic significance for the infant of the capacity to
re-secure lost (and internal) objects (1944, pp. 780–781; 1952b, pp. 112–113):
In the same way speech development, beginning with the imitation of sounds, is one of
those great achievements which bring the child (physically and mentally) nearer to the
people he loves and also enables him to find new objects. In all these achievements, the
12 S. Sherwin-White and T. Klauber
infant’s attempts to modify and control his objects – his internal and external
world – play an important part. (PP/KLE/C/ 51, 1944, Lecture 3, pp. 13–14;
1952b, pp. 112–113)
Klein re-used the observations with slightly varied comments according to context
and aim, but they constitute careful observational data to be interpreted and used
to illustrate and, hopefully, support her theoretical stance of early object relations,
and a complex emotional inner world. But she was usually careful to note the
status of her comments as her interpretations of the data.

Infant observations of the weaning process

This section includes a selection of Klein’s infant observations (some of her grand-
children from the years 1937–1943), and descriptions gleaned from a few mothers
relating to the feeding/weaning process. Klein’s interest in the potential of infant
observation reflected in part current scientific attention in the 1930s (in the UK)
in research into the baby’s first years of life. In particular, she was to acknowledge
the influence of her paediatrician psychiatrist colleague and psychoanalyst,
Winnicott (e.g. 1936, 44n.1) and Merrill Middlemore (see above and 1952b,
p. 96). Brief observations of babies first occur in Klein’s lecture ‘Weaning’. It
was first published in 1936a in a book entitled On the upbringing of children, by
five psycho-analysts, edited by the psychoanalyst John Rickman. This contained
a public lecture course, organized in the spring of 1935 to ‘meet an increasingly
pressing demand for some statement on upbringing from the psycho-analytical
standpoint’ (Rickman, 1936, p. xv). First published in 1936, the book was
quickly re-published in 1938, giving some idea of its popularity, while in a
second edition (1952), Klein added only a postscript on the current place of
her theory on the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions in early infancy
(1936b, pp. 304–305). Besides Merrill Middlemore, the other lecturers were
the psychoanalysts Susan Isaacs, Ella Sharpe and Nina Searl.
Klein’s (1935) lecture used some brief observations of babies, for example on
the signs of the baby of a few weeks old actually enjoying periods in his waking life
(1936a, p. 34; 1936b, pp. 281–282), the quality of contact between mother and
baby helping the baby to take in the nipple (1936a, p. 4; 1936b, p. 297), the baby
and mother’s ways of playing pleasurably together and evoking ‘love’ (1936a, p.
39; 1936b, p. 300). But the vignettes used came from the clinical case of Rita,
who experienced a long and difficult weaning process due to her own internal con-
flicts and a poor relationship on the part of the mother (see chapter 6). At this
point, in Klein’s thinking, weaning is viewed primarily as the loss of the baby’s
first external good object, bringing to a peak the internal conflict of the depressive
position. Successfully managed, it, with the other stimuli mentioned above (the
emotional concomitants of physical developments), help the baby find replace-
ments and other interests. Klein’s paper contains advice to mothers on feeding
and on the weaning process, as was a feature of the book; as has been noted
 Infant Observation 13

(chapter 6), Klein had also chosen to offer some advice in the very difficult (and
different) circumstances of Rita’s long drawn out weaning (Klein, 1936a, p. 42).
Klein’s emphasis on the importance of the emotional input from the mother at
this (and every stage from birth on: patience, gentleness, support and love) are dis-
cussed in the following section.
The infant’s relation to food and the relation to the mother, which are interdependent at
the beginning of life, become to some extent divorced as development goes on. The pro-
gress in this differentiation and in the capacity to love the mother as a person depends on
the successful building up of trust in good objects and in goodness within. This again is
influenced by a number of internal factors which make possible a sublimation of oral
greed. At the same time the importance of everyday experiences cannot be overrated
in this connection, since difficulties arising over feeding, as well as persistent sensations
of physical discomfort – particularly illness – in the early stages of life increase anxieties
from all sources and this interferes with the developing of trust and with the steps
towards overcoming ambivalence. (1944, p. 776)

It was in the 1952b paper on infant observation that Klein included data from her
own and other’s observations to document, amid a growing volume of research
from paediatricians, psychologists and psychoanalysts, different descriptions of
infants’ reactions to the process of weaning. She used observations of six infants
(Infants A–F ). As was her practice, she first gave the observations and usually
then the theory or interpretations. Two vignettes are used here, which refer specifi-
cally to the difficulties of feeding in the first months of life and include the process
of weaning. These contain infants’ inferred unconscious phantasies of an uninte-
grated split of mother as good/bad (see above), feelings of frustration sparking, as
has been seen in earlier chapters, fears of a bad, cannibalized breast/mother – in
due course to be resolved as the child becomes more integrated and able to bear
(without splitting) the painful knowledge and experience that it is his mother
whom he both loves and at times hates.
The following vignette illustrated the way a baby came to accept bottles sup-
plementing breastfeeding, helping her to turn to a new food (and object), while
maintaining love for her mother, when only a few weeks old:
The following instance illustrates the way in which a baby came to accept bottles sup-
plementing breast-feeding. The infant girl A was a good feeder (but not excessively
greedy) and soon gave those indications of a developing object-relation which I have
described above. These good relations to food and to the mother were shown in the lei-
surely way she took her food, coupled with evident enjoyment of it; in her occasional
interruption of her feed, when only a few weeks old, to look up at the mother’s face
or at her breast; a little later on, in even taking friendly notice of the family during
her feed. In the sixth week a bottle had to be introduced following the evening feed,
because the breast milk was insufficient. A took the bottle without difficulty. In the
tenth week, however, she showed on two evenings signs of reluctance while drinking
14 S. Sherwin-White and T. Klauber
from the bottle, but finished it. On the third evening she refused it altogether … The
mother, not wishing to force her, put her into the cot after the breast feed, thinking
she might go to sleep. The child cried with hunger, so the mother, without picking
her up, gave her the bottle which she now emptied eagerly. The same thing happened
on the subsequent evenings: when on the mother’s lap, the infant refused the bottle, but
took it at once when she was put into her cot. After a few days the baby accepted the
bottle while she was still in her mother’s arms and sucked readily this time; there was
no more difficulty when other bottles were introduced. (1952b, p. 101)

Klein assumes the disruption was due to increasing anxiety (depressive) and that
the difficulty was increased because when the baby was close to the breast she
could smell it, increasing a wish to be fed (as usual) from the breast. In her cot,
separation of the bottle from the breast lessened this frustration (Klein, 1952b,
p. 102).
Klein gave an example of the conclusion of weaning, when ‘the loss of the
breast (or bottle), however, occurring at weaning is of a different order’:
The following instance will serve as an illustration. The infant E, weaned from his last
breast feed at nine months, showed no particular disturbance in his attitude to food. He
has by that time already accepted other foods and throve on them. But he showed an
increased need for the mother’s presence and in general for attention and company.
One week after his last breast feed, he sobbed in his sleep, woke up with signs of
anxiety and unhappiness and could not be comforted. The mother resorted to letting
him suck the breast once more. He sucked both breasts for about the usual time, and
although there was obviously little milk he seemed completely satisfied, went happily
to sleep and the symptoms described above were much reduced after this experience.
This would go to show that depressive anxiety relating to the loss of the good object,
the breast, had been allayed by the very fact that it reappeared. (1952b, p. 107)

This experience of weaning apparently went comparatively smoothly, thanks also

to an evidently well-attuned mother.

The ‘apathetic’ baby

Klein highlights the presentation of the baby to be worried about – the quiet,
undemanding, passive baby. Just as Klein had seen the masked emotional difficul-
ties of the ‘too good’ child, so too she marked out a worrying category of babies for
their apparent ‘apathy’:
I have repeatedly stressed now a real happiness in the baby and given you some criteria
for such development. It is not difficult to distinguish between a baby who has difficulty
over feeding who cries much, whose development in fact seems to go wrong, and a baby
who thrives on his food and obviously enjoys life. But it is easy to mistake a baby who
does not particularly dislike his food and cries little for a happy baby. And yet as devel-
opment later on shows some of these easy going babies in fact are not really happy. Their
 Infant Observation 15
lack of crying may be due to a kind of apathy, to something like resignation. It is difficult
to account in so young a being for such a state of mind without allowing for a great com-
plexity of emotions. But if we follow up the development of some of these babies in their
relation to food and to people, we find that serious difficulties soon appear. They are
often shy of people, particularly of strangers, their interest in the external world, in
play and learning is inhibited, for instance they are often slow at learning to crawl
and walk because there seems so little incentive. And they are in fact very often
showing strong signs of neurosis as their development goes on. (PP/KLE/C. 51,
1939b, Lecture 2, pp. 5–5a: see also 1939a, Lecture 1, p. 21, 1944, p. 776, 1952b,
p. 104)
Although Klein tends, at this stage, to link the reasons for this lack of development
to a failure to negotiate the depressive position (1952b, p. 104), there inevitably
arises the suspicion that there may be something more behind such infants’ diffi-
culties, compared with those able to work to re-establish relations with a nurturing
mother and breast (envy is not mentioned) – that is to say other than those infants
too sensitive to cope with what other babies could manage. The words Klein used
– lack of incentive, apathy – bring to mind infants who include, at the most
extreme end, those who have suffered from serious neglect, deprivation or
trauma, shutting down and failing to thrive (e.g. Music, 2011; Shore, 2003);
those who go without any, or sufficient positive, loving stimulation from
mother, whatever the reason (maternal depression, attachment problems,
trauma, etc.). Though Klein does see these infants in terms of failed emotional
development over the challenges of coping with her paranoid-schizoid position,
it seems quite evident that the psychological impact of external circumstances,
such as emotional and physical neglect, now so familiar and researched, may
well have their role in some of the babies Klein knew about, as indeed her descrip-
tions themselves suggest, at least to this author in the twenty-first century. That is
the mark of good observation, which can be illuminated, or not, by later research
and study.

The importance of the maternal environment

The preceding section leads on nicely to this aspect of infant development. It
should not surprise that in her ‘Weaning’ lecture of 1935, and her lectures of
1939, Melanie Klein attached considerable importance to (1) the role of the
mother and (2) her handling of the feeding situation, prototype of the mother’s
role in nurturing her baby. After all, Klein consistently had underlined the impor-
tance of the emotional environment provided by mother (and father) in her early
publications, as noted in this book. So it is consistent that she still chose to con-
tinue to stress this point for such a sensitive and formulative period as postnatal
and early infancy as well. This aspect Klein returned to (1944, 1952a, 1952b)
as an integral part of her thinking, alongside the unconscious internal world of
the infant – at that time original recognition of the importance of the mother’s
16 S. Sherwin-White and T. Klauber

emotional capacities in relation to nurturing the emotional development of her

baby. Several of Klein’s observations in this chapter have already shown the impor-
tance of timely, sensitive interventions of emotional understanding, love and
attention from the mother (see above). In her lecture on ‘Weaning’, Klein
made several references to the role of the mother in this context and the signifi-
cance of establishing as early as possible a ‘good human relationship between
the child and its mother’, that is, from birth:
From the very beginning the mother must do everything she can to help the child to
establish a happy relationship with her. So often we find that the mother does everything
in her power for the child’s physical condition; she concentrates on this as if the child
were a material thing which needs constant upkeep, like a valuable machine rather than
a human being. This is the attitude of many paediatricians who are mostly concerned
with the physical development of the child, and are only interested in his emotional reac-
tions as far as they indicate something about his physical or intellectual state. Mothers
often do not realise that a tiny baby is already a human being whose emotional devel-
opment is of the highest importance. (1936a, pp. 43–44, 1936b, p. 297)
There are many other occasions than just at the breast when the baby will feel and
unconsciously record his mother’s love, patience and understanding – or the contrary
… The way in which the baby is handled even from the time of delivery is bound to
leave impressions in his mind. (1936a, pp. 43-44, 1936b, p. 297)

Klein stresses repeatedly in this lecture the need to appreciate that the baby is not a
thing, but a little human being with (passionate) feelings that mothers can help
with, and the very significant role any mother has for the emotional development
of her child. A theme which is reiterated in the following quotation:
It is not only the older child or the adult who senses a real understanding and sympathy
with his conflicts, sorrows and sadness, but even in the infant in very early stages of
development this understanding helps to establish this close contact which is one of
the foundations for the baby’s happiness as well as for his future stability. (PP/KLE/
C. 51, 1939b, Lecture 2, p. 19)

Of course, Klein’s main emphasis has been on the infant’s emotional development
through the early stages of an inner world dominated by extremes and by the pro-
jection of phantasies into the mother; here is hinted the other side of the picture,
the fact of projections from mother into the baby. In her 1944 paper, Klein brings
out more emphatically the implicit importance of the external environment in
arguing against Anna Freud’s then position that until at least six months old
the baby had no object relations (i.e. primary narcissism) (see 1944, p. 755,
quoted above):
There is, as we know, no better means of allaying a child’s fears than the presence and
love of his mother, and the same holds good for the infant as for the older child. The
 Infant Observation 17
accumulation of such beneficial experiences is one of the main factors in his overcoming
his infantile neurosis. (1944, p. 772)

A consistent and cumulative experience of mother’s presence and love is seen as

vital for the infant’s healthy emotional development. Klein’s re-emphasis on the
external environment, that is, mother, father, the family complex, is stressed
again in her more general papers of 1952a and 1952b, for example:
I have indicated above that although his feelings focus on the feeding relationship with
the mother, represented by her breast, other aspects of the mother enter already into the
earliest relation to her; for even the very young infant responds to his mother’s smile, her
hands, her voice, her holding him and attending to his needs. The gratification and love
which the infant experiences in these situations all help to counteract persecutory
anxiety … (1952a, p. 64)

Klein began her paper ‘On observing the behaviour of young infants’ (1952b) by
noting how ‘all inferences which I shall draw as to further development must be
qualified by the following consideration’ (i.e. beyond unconscious infantile
processes):
From the beginning of postnatal life and at every stage in development, external factors
affect the outcome. Even with adults, as we know, attitudes and character may be
favourably or unfavourably influenced by environment and circumstances, and this
applies to a far greater extent to children. Therefore, in relating conclusions drawn
from my psychoanalytic experience to the study of young infants, I am only suggesting
possible, or, one might say, probable lines of development. (1952b, pp. 94–95)]

Klein goes on to note

We have, of course, to take into full consideration every detail in the way the infant is fed
and handled by his mother. It can be observed that an initially promising attitude
towards food may be disrupted by adverse feeding conditions; whereas difficulties in
sucking can sometimes be mitigated by the mother’s love and patience. (1952b, p. 96)
Before going on to describe very early interactions ‘like a loving conversation
between mother and baby’, Klein added in a significant footnote,
We must keep in mind, though, that however important these first influences are, the
impact of the environment is of major importance at every stage of the child’s develop-
ment. Even the good effect of the earliest upbringing can be to some extent undone
through later harmful experiences, just as difficulties arising in early life may be dimin-
ished through subsequent beneficial influences. (1952b, p. 96n.1)
The conclusion is that with all children the mother’s patient handling from the earliest
days onwards is of the greatest moment … From its inception analysis has always laid
stress on the importance of the child’s early experiences, but it seems to me that only
since we know more about the nature and content of its early anxieties and its
18 S. Sherwin-White and T. Klauber
phantasy-life, are we able to understand fully why the external factor is so important.
(1952b, p. 98)

The content and importance of early infantile anxieties had, of course, been
Klein’s great discovery from the 1920s. Klein links this to the way in which dom-
inance in an infant’s unconscious of helpful or persecutory figures ‘is strongly
influenced by his actual experiences, primarily with his mother, but also soon
with the father and other members of the family’ (1952b, p. 98). What Klein
does not make explicit here, but seems implicit, is the significant alternative scen-
ario of the mother, who herself perhaps has not had this good early experience,
whose attitude to her role as mother and nurturing may be at times negative
and is the source of hostile, potentially damaging unconscious projections into
her infant, quite apart from adverse external situations in a family.
Klein was explicit, however, in emphasizing how important it was that a
mother should not ‘become involved in his [her infant’s] sexuality’ (1936a,
pp. 50–52; 1936b, pp. 300–301). Klein emphasized that the fact of infantile sexu-
ality was still not generally realized, unsurprisingly because this was (and still is
perhaps) potentially shocking to the general public. Klein’s advice for the
mother was that ‘Her own erotic needs must be well controlled where he is con-
cerned’. She was not to become ‘passionately excited’ while involved in cleaning
the baby, especially the genitals, explaining that ‘The mother’s lack of self-
control may easily be felt by the child as a seduction, and this would set up
undue complications in his development’. These frank statements, probably
very disturbing in their implications, indicate that Klein was alert to the possibility
of a mother’s potentially inappropriate and damaging sexualized behaviour with
her baby, which was to be fully explored and researched only comparatively
recently (see e.g. Welldon, 1992). Klein was well aware how parents’ unconscious
preoccupations and problems can impact on relations with their children (see
chapters 3, 8). The potentially disturbing impact of a baby in the peri- and
post-natal periods for some mothers, and their vulnerability, is familiar today,
and understood to stem from a complex interplay between a particular individual’s
internal world (and ambivalence, for example to her own mother) and external
factors of her environment: see, for example, Raphael-Leff (2000).
So, in a nutshell, Klein to some extent foreshadowed the importance of a
mother’s capacity for emotional nurturing (and in effect containment of the
baby, later developed by Bion) and the vital role of her empathic treatment of
her baby, exemplified in a number of the vignettes and citations. This fostered
the ability of the tiny and fragile infant gradually to cope with difficulties and
hiccups in the early but inevitable process of individuation – becoming a little
person capable of coping with the challenges of absences of his mother as he gradu-
ally finds representative and new objects for support. She also outlined the poten-
tial impact of the lack of this.
 Infant Observation 19

Klein had consistently made use of careful observations of her young (and
older) patients, the quality and character of their non-verbal communications,
facial expressions, and body language (see chapters 5–6). Now, observation of
babies provided a potential way forward from the 1930s for better understanding
of infant development, and backing up (or not) her own theoretical positions in
particular. She also saw the value of infant observation in the training of child psy-
choanalytic psychotherapists, as she remarked with some enthusiasm in her paper
at a symposium on infant observation that she attended in Paris in 1957, noting its
introduction some eight years previously at the Tavistock Clinic by the Esther
Bick (PP/KLE/C. 71, 1957, ‘Contribution to the discussion on direct infant
observation’, p. 3). For the future, she summarized her position, as follows,
with a certain optimism about the future of infant observation as a source of
new knowledge, the prime aim being better understanding of the infant’s
emotional life to facilitate his psychic well-being. What is crucial is Klein’s inno-
vatory appreciation of how difficult a baby’s emotional life is:
The very young infant’s mental life is still a mystery to most adults. I venture to suggest
that a closer observation of babies,2 stimulated by the increased knowledge of early
mental processes which was derived from the psychoanalysis of young children,
should in time come to lead to a better insight into the baby’s emotional life … . I
have repeatedly pointed out that an understanding mother may by her attitude diminish
her baby’s conflicts and thus in some measure help him to cope more effectively with his
anxieties. A fuller and more general realization of the young infant’s anxieties and
emotional needs will therefore lessen suffering in infancy and so prepare the ground
for greater happiness and stability in later life. (1952b, pp. 116–117)

Klein was also aware that scientific research would eventually reveal much about
the pre- and perinatal life of the infant (1952b, p. 116n.1), quite apart from the
postnatal period; she also noted the (then) open question of the possible impact of
the mother’s mental and physical states on the foetus (1952b, pp. 116–117),
which are comparatively well known today. Klein’s consistent emphasis on the
importance, right from the start, of the nature of the emotional relationship of
a mother with her baby for the infant’s development is amply confirmed today.
Research into early brain development, for example, is revealing how parent-
infant interaction and its quality creates specific neural pathways in the baby’s
brain, and that interaction is the stimulus for this to take place.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors
Susan Sherwin-White died in 2016. She had two successful careers, the first as an aca-
demic ancient historian with many publications, including (with A. Kuhrt) From
20 S. Sherwin-White and T. Klauber

Samarkand to Sardis: A New Approach to the Seleucid Empire (London: Duckworth, 1993).
In the mid-80s, she began to train as a child and adolescent psychotherapist at the Tavi-
stock Clinic. She had recently retired from her role as Lead Child Psychotherapist in West
London Mental Health Trust. Sherwin-White held significant roles in the UK Association
of Child Psychotherapists, as Chair and, later, Chair of its Ethic Committee. She taught
psychoanalytic theory for many years for the Tavistock Clinic Psychoanalytic Observa-
tional Studies course and had published a number of clinical papers on child and adoles-
cent issues. In 2014, she co-edited, with Debbie Hindle, Sibling Matters: A
Psychoanalytic, Developmental and Systemic Approach to which she also contributed
chapters on Freud and Klein. Her final book, Melanie Klein, Revisited: Pioneer and Revolu-
tionary in the Psychoanalysis of Young Children, is published by Karnac in May 2017.
(Sherwin-White, 2017). She had intended that her paper on Klein and Infant Observation
(edited for publication in this issue by Trudy Klauber) would be published in Infant
Observation.

Notes
1. In this series, Merrill Middlemore, author of The nursing couple published in (1941,
cited the work of the Austrian psychologist, Charlotte Buhler (1931), and her series
of infant observations (1936a, pp. 57–58).
2. It is notable that in the interview with Daniel Pick (2001, p. 6), Segal was asked about
Klein’s view on the use of infant observation, and recognized Klein’s own use of obser-
vations and her interest and enthusiasm for Bick’s research on baby observation.
However, she also said that Klein became,
… very suspicious of analytical theories like those of Meltzer and Bick based on
observation. She had to admit that we don’t know what goes on in a baby’s mind,
only the ‘infantile aspect’ of the adult or child in an analytical situation. It may
confirm or disprove things but you cannot base analytical theories only on obser-
vations of behaviour.
Segal was, of course, speaking nearly 50 years after Klein wrote (1952b), and some 40 years
after her death (1950). What she says does not fit well either with Klein’s writing, or use of
observations; and Klein had openly acknowledged in 1944 (see above) that a baby cannot
tell us what he is feeling. Furthermore, Bick’s theoretical publications, beginning in the
1960s (see Briggs, 2002, pp. 27–59), followed Klein’s death, as did those of Meltzer.
Segal’s words may indeed reflect her own views, rather than those of Klein.

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