Changes in psychoanalysis in the 1930s reflected a broader pattern of democratization associated with what historians have termed ‘the second industrial revolution,’ a revolution that included both modernist cultural experimentation and social democracy. On the one hand, Melanie Klein's radically new and ‘feminine’ focus on concrete relations with immediate others reflected the rise of personal life: forms of life not reducible to one's social role. At the same time, Klein's thought resonated with a working-class and popular-front belief in organicism, connection and group belonging. In both cases the relation to the mother was critical. Hence, there were deep connections between Klein's thought and the Beveridge welfare state. Psychoanalysis did not generate the welfare state's focus on the mother/infant bond; the welfare state did not normalize British analysis. But there was an ‘elective affinity’ between the two histories and it operated at a very deep level.
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