The Psychoanalytic Contributions of Melitta Schmideberg Klein. More Than Melanie Klein’s Rebel Daughter

Abstract

Compared to the impact of the work of Melanie Klein on the history of psychoanalysis, the contributions of her daughter, Melitta Schmideberg, passed almost unnoticed. At present, Schmideberg is solely remembered for having harshly attacked her mother at the start of the Controversial Discussions of the British Psycho-Analytical Society and for having coined the fitting expression "stable instability" in order to describe borderline and asocial personality disorders. However, the author discusses how the early groundbreaking discoveries of Klein with regards to primitive anxieties were the result of the joint work and thinking of Melanie and Melitta. Moreover, he argues that the conflict between the two, along with the subsequent polarization of their views, did not facilitate the development of psychoanalysis, neither did it help the analytic community to recognize the value of Melitta's contributions to psychoanalysis.

Necessary conjunctions: Hawkspur Camp and the transdisciplinary roots of therapeutic community

“…Schmideberg, like Franklin, was a founding staff member of the ISTD and Friedlander an early staff member who later founded the Hampstead Child Therapy Training with Anna Freud (Lush, 1999). All shared Franklin’s interest in the environmental and psychosocial factors of delinquency, and like Ferenczi, in therapeutic approaches outside those of the conventional consulting room (Friedlander, 1947; Shapira, 2013, 2017; Cassulio, 2016:fn4).…”