This notebook provides an intimate insight into the writing process of Austrian psychoanalyst Melanie Klein (1882–1960), using excerpts of a facsimile manuscript of her treatise, “On Identification” (1955) which presents the pioneering child psychologist’s theory of “object relations.” Whereas Sigmund Freud defined man as an individual creature, Klein assumed that individuals are marked by their relationships to other people, primarily through early childhood interaction with the mother. The way she worked out her thesis, which was provocative in the eyes of many of her colleagues, positioned it within the scientific context, and how her writing was inspired by literary sources is documented in reproduced excerpts from the manuscript with handwritten notes, as well as by notes of quotations from philosophy and literature, and a facsimile of a letter from Joan Rivière, in which the supporter, translator, and patron of the Klein School, “expresses her fears of the multiple misunderstandings to which she feels Klein’s work is subjected.”

 

With an introduction by Jacqueline Rose, Professor at the Queen Mary University of London and a fellow of the British Academy.