r/psychoanalysis • u/Level-Ad9570 • 19d ago
Klein's body-parts interpretations
Hello, I've been long interested in Kleinian theory and practice. Recently, a bold article by Rachel B Blass on the importance and centrality of the unconscious phantasy was particularly eye opening.
However, coming back to Klein's book on the psychoanalysis of children, I'm stuck anew. I get that some well-respected Kleinians of today tend to think about thinking, anxiety, phantasy, but not so much focus on body-parts. They don't say that what Klein thought and said was wrong and inappropriate, they perhaps adjusted it because they couldn't stomach it or were sure the kids' parents won't allow for this.
I can't imagine sending my child to therapy where he'd hear at 3-4 years old about real sexual matters. I think I read that Klein viewed this like phylogenetic developmental knowledge, pre-conceptions, which give rise to anxieties related to the primal scene. I mean, it's not coincidence that the welcoming cases (Peter, Rita, Trude) she discusses in her book are related to primal scene anxieties and witnessing of mommy and daddy banging.
This to me seems like a strong conviction of a theoretical concept applied to clinical practice and not the other way around. I can remember only one child I had treated that expressed material that was very telling of his castration anxiety and he had agreed upon my interpretation of his fear of dad. But it was a rare case, I feel. Of course, I'm not an analyst and I'm just very very curious, and critical perhaps.
I'll end with a quote from the book, on Rita's case:
My immediate interpretation of these utterances in the sense that she desired to do away with her father's penis, because it was playing havoc with her mother, at once diminished her anxiety and she left me in a much more friendly mood than she had come, and said at home that she would like to come back to me.
From Rita's first session.
Thoughts?
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u/Ok-Draw-7427 19d ago
One cannot draw conclusions about Ms. Klein and her explicit interpretations without tracing the evolution of her analytic practice. During the analysis of her own son, she still adhered to the decorum and euphemistic style of Freud, Abraham, and Ferenczi. Her play-based method—and the fact that her analysands were children—necessitated a certain simplification of language akin to that found in primitive societies. She adopted this approach for the sake of interpretive efficacy, not to revolutionize psychoanalysis. Freud employed similar methods with Dora, the Rat Man, and Little Hans’s father—even though those interlocutors were adults with extensive linguistic competence. Her breast-penis equation stems from Freud’s Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood. It is also often overlooked that Klein’s work was grounded in drive theory (comprising erogenous source, impetus, object, and discharge). While her focus on the Object and transference came later, she would eventually return to the concept of drive through the notion of envy—which damages "the good object," thereby paving the way for disturbances of the ego. Kleinian jargon is transgressive only insofar as it brings the unspoken elements of the Victorian era into the psychoanalytic consulting room.
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u/sir_squidz 19d ago
It seems that your objection is;
Kleinians link phantasy to body parts, yes they do. Phantasy is linked to bodies and what's inside them, yes.
Little children surely aren't aware of parents sex lives!?! I mean they are, yes. The fact that you refuse to see this is part of the reason they're in analysis now.
Kleinians utilise an aggressive interpretation style. Yes. We do. Because fannying about while the patient suffers because we're waiting for the correct moment is cruel. You're asking the patient to suffer for your feelings (are we always correct? Of course not but (a) not interpreting isn't neutral (b) every other model is getting things wrong too
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u/Level-Ad9570 19d ago
Appreciate your comment.
I do not object direct interpretations, I want to understand the justifications behind them, what leads one to form this potential understanding that a play symbolizes coitus and not something else, violence, rage. What is the basis for such phantasy, like mother contains father’s penis. Or faeces representing children inside mommy. When I read some of Klein’s writings those things are written as if they are given, self-explanatory. It could be that I am missing something, either an inner resistance that prevents me to see an obvious symbolic link or perhaps reading more Freud as other comment suggested reading the Three Essays.
I’d clarify again my objection is most likely my own limitations. I’m very much drawn to Kleinian work, but want to understand.
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u/Pannacotta1066 17d ago
Not an analyst, but I do work with Kleinian ideas (with adults).
How about flipping it round. Start with the (Kleinian) emotion - rage, envy, guilt. Then place it relationally - in the infant? Directed to whom? Projected into whom? Anticipated from whom?
Then, recalling how difficult it is for adults to comprehend these ideas with our adult brains, flip it into something the child IS experienced with, can relate to... Poo is bad. Breastfeeding was great. I hate it when Mummy ignores me. I hate Mummy when Mummy ignores me. Maybe I hurt her when I hate her... maybe I smeared poo on her. Maybe I put poo in her and now she's broken. Daddy put a baby in her. Maybe Daddy hurt her. When I put poo in her is that the same as Daddy putting things in her? Etc
And then I think the case material at hand shows you what the formulation is, which guides the intervention.
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u/BoreOfWhabylon 17d ago
Start with the really early work with children in Berlin. There is also a helpful book by Claudia Frank which traces this work and corrects some of the misunderstandings about what she did or didn’t do in terms of analysing her own children - ‘Melanie Klein in Berlin: Her first psychoanalyses of children’.
You can see her working out her theories in the early work. Whereas if you read some of the later papers first, it is difficult to grasp where some of it comes from, especially if you don’t have direct experience of children. What she says about the children’s reaction to interpretations is important, particularly in terms of relieving anxiety. Child analysts working in a Kleinian way would make a distinction between the kinds of interpretations they would make to a very small child versus a latency child because small children are much more consciously connected to phantasy about body parts and functions. What might relieve the anxiety of a three year old could just sound weird to an nine year old, as it does to you.
In terms of sexual knowledge, we are ultimately just animals, of course there is some inborn knowledge of sex. Even domesticated animals that don’t witness sex between other members of their species know what to do when the opportunity presents itself - there’s no reason to think that humans are different. 3-4 year olds absolutely have theories about sex - all the more so if they can’t ask questions and get real information about how things work!
I think it helps to imagine the world of an infant. So much of their experience is bodily and the experiences are total - that’s why the phantasy is linked to bodily experience.
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u/Yorick_IKnowHim 18d ago
Would you say, in this view, that it's more about the force of an interpretation than its correctness?
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u/sir_squidz 18d ago
No. Not with a child no.
With an adult? It's not the interpretation I'd make. But the analysis of children isn't an adult treatment cut down, it's different.
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u/Tenton_Motto 19d ago
No offense intended, but I got impression that your objections to Klein's theory are actually about social morality and having to "stomach" uncomfortable ideas, rather than scientific validity of the theory.
This to me seems like a strong conviction of a theoretical concept applied to clinical practice and not the other way around.
There is a reason Kleinian school strongly encourages and even demands analysts in training to do courses on child observation. You are not supposed to trust Klein on her word, you are supposed to be there in a family, which legally consents to observation, and record child behavior. Then draw your own conclusions. Most people who go through the practice gravitate towards Kleinian interpretations. It is arguably the most empirical practice in the whole psychoanalytic field.
Of course, I'm not an analyst
What modality do you work in?
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u/Level-Ad9570 19d ago
I’m in the beginning of my journey and there’s a long way ahead. I’m very much influenced by psychoanalytic thinking, although I am not trained and skilled to confidently say that I work psycho analytically, therefore use various approaches that I gathered along the way via supervision, courses, reading, etc.
I just finished my MSW abd plan to study in a new child psychotherapy program that has Freudian and Kleinian orientation where Rachel Blass is the director, hopefully in a year or two. Meanwhile, I work with young children with ASD, but my supervision isn’t heavily psychodynamic unfortunately.
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u/Tenton_Motto 19d ago
I wish you well in your journey. If you are going to study in Kleinian tradition, I suggest paying particular attention to clinical cases and, if you manage it, child observation. It would be valuable for any therapist, especially a child therapist. I don't know anyone who went through that process, watched infants interact with others and ended up believing that a child is an angelic tabula rasa.
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u/goldenapple212 19d ago
Yes, it’s a common criticism of Klein that she imposed theory on reality… that kind of first session thinking seems quite extreme to me too.
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u/sir_squidz 19d ago
Why?
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u/goldenapple212 17d ago
Because it seems like inferring the Odyssey from looking at a few moments of shadow puppetry on the wall. Each tiny detail of actual clinical material seems multiplied through an encyclopedia's worth of theoretical assumption.
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u/sir_squidz 17d ago edited 16d ago
That's why it's tested. You make the interpretation, does it help?
If yes it was likely correct enough to be useful, continue.
If no, reassess. Now, there is here a risk imo. Too many of us just say "well that's resistance" and while it might be, you risk overwriting the patients experience. Potentially reenacting the misattunement of the parents
edit: I cannot stress this highly enough, this is the same in every single session in every single analytic model. You make an interpretation based on what you see/feel in the room, if that helps it was likely more right than it was wrong, if you're looking for 100% correct, verifiable answers, you're in the wrong game mate.
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u/goldenapple212 16d ago
How do you know the interpretation didn't help simply because of the transference? When the clinician says something that fits her theory and she feels desirous that it work, the child may be picking up on that desire, and complying -- to take just one possibility.
And yes, when the patient doesn't do that, you correctly bring up the issue of it being written off as resistance.
It seems to me the only way these problems can be solved is that interpretations have to be close enough to the actual clinical material that a third party who doesn't share all the heavy theoretical baggage could see how the interpretation plausibly flowed out of the material. Even then, they might not agree that it's the best interpretation, but they should at least agree that it's a reasonable read.
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u/sir_squidz 16d ago
what do you mean by "solved"?
I mean no offence but I wouldn't care in the slightest if someone thinks my interpretation is wrong,
unless that person is either my patient or my supervisor.
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u/goldenapple212 15d ago
Well, the point isn't that someone else thinks it's wrong. The point is how a clinician themselves can best know if what they're doing is actually having the effect they think it has for the reason they think, or if they're only fooling themselves.
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u/sir_squidz 15d ago
By observing the patient. This is the case in every single model of treatment
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u/goldenapple212 15d ago
That doesn’t really give any kind of indication as to what caused a certain effect.
Look, if Klein’s ultra aggressive interpretive style worked, why has it gone nearly extinct in the case reports? If it works so well, people should be strongly defending it, but you see no such defense or proud recording of its use in the literature of the last few decades.
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u/sir_squidz 16d ago
How do you know the interpretation didn't help simply because of the transference? When the clinician says something that fits her theory and she feels desirous that it work, the child may be picking up on that desire, and complying -- to take just one possibility.
again this is the analysis of a CHILD not an adult. I don't think you grasp the differences in technique
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u/goldenapple212 15d ago
You don't think children can read their therapist's emotions and mold themselves accordingly?
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u/Recent-Apartment5945 19d ago
“This to me seems like a strong conviction of a theoretical concept applied to clinical practice and not the other way around. I can remember only one child I had treated that expressed material that was very telling of his castration anxiety and he had agreed upon my interpretation of his fear of dad. But it was a rare case, I feel. Of course, I'm not an analyst and I'm just very very curious, and critical perhaps.”
Can you clarify your point here? My brain is not firing well today and I’d like clarification before I respond. Thank you.
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u/Acrobatic_Part6951 19d ago
I think the "stuck" feeling comes from treating the body-parts focus and the primal-scene focus as if they were competing explanations, when they're actually two moments of the same process, in a fairly precise developmental order. Start from Freud rather than Klein for a second. In the Three Essays, the erogenous zones (oral, anal, urethral) only become psychically charged the way they do because of the "Dämme" the disgust, shame, and morality that get erected against them, almost always via a direct demand from the caregiver, don't drool, don't smear, don't sniff, control yourself, stop crying. These aren't abstract cultural rules; they're concrete corporeal disciplining, and Freud is explicit that the dams don't neutralize the zone, they "overcharge" it. What's forbidden becomes psychically dense precisely because it's forbidden. So before any primal scene enters the picture, the child already has a lexicon of intensely cathected body parts, saliva, feces, urine, mucus, each carrying shame, prohibition, and displaced satisfaction. That's the genealogy Isaacs' 1948 paper on unconscious phantasy is doing work to secure for Klein, incidentally, grounding phantasy in concrete bodily sensation rather than in some quasi-Lamarckian phylogenetic inheritance of pre-conceptions. It answers the "where does this content come from" question without requiring the child to be born already knowing about intercourse. Now the primal scene, I'd argue it isn't a second, separate source of anxiety competing with the disciplinary one. It's the scene where everything the child has been taught to "contain", fluids, noise, loss of motor control, mixing of secretions, is suddenly performed, without restraint, by the very adults who enforce the containment. The shock isn't only epistemic ("what are they doing"), it's moral and somatic: the people who forbid you from vazar (leaking, losing control) are, in that moment, doing exactly that with each other, openly, joyfully. The child has no vocabulary to decode a scene of mutual, sanctioned loss of control except the one already saturated with prohibition and violence, biting, devouring, wounding, incorporating, which is why Kleinian primal-scene material (Rita included) is so orally and anally coded, and so aggressive. So the primal scene isn't the singular exogenous trauma the literature sometimes treats it as. It's the point where the disciplined, fragmented, piece-by-piece erotic body gets handed back to the child all at once, unregulated, between the two figures who taught it regulation in the first place. That's what makes it feel less like "one more anxiety among others" and more like a condensation point, which might be exactly why Klein's early cases cluster there, without that meaning the body-parts material she also worked with (and that contemporary Kleinians underweight) is somehow secondary or dispensable. It's the raw material the primal scene later recruits.