Abstract
Melanie Klein (1882–1960) was the first analyst who managed to construct an original system of thought, contesting many Freudian principles, without being forced to leave the psychoanalytic movement. This chapter deals with the strange ways in which her theories were easily transmitted from London to Buenos Aires, in the late 1940s and the early 1950s, whereas she had to wait until 1959 for her first book to be translated into French. Nevertheless, before this date, a curious trilateral circulation of Kleinian ideas — from London to Paris via Buenos Aires — had already been possible, thanks to the action of certain analysts, like Enrique Pichon Rivière, Angel Garma and Willy Baranger. They were European immigrants installed in South America, who succeeded to build unexpected bridges between the Old and the New Worlds. In this process, as we shall see, the role played by their wives — who became analysts as well — was also very significant.
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Notes
Letter from S. Ferenczi to S. Freud, June 30, 1927. Quoted by P. Grosskurth, Melanie Klein: her world and her work, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987) [1st edn., New York: Knopf, 1986], p. 162. Also available in The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, 1920–1933, volume 3 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 311.
E. Jones, Papers on Psychoanalysis (London: Baillière, Tindall & Cox, 1938). See the introduction to his conference “Early female sexuality,”
quoted by J.-A. Miller, Le principe d’Horacio (Paris: Atelier de psychanalyse appliquée, 2001), p. 8.
M. Klein, Die Psychoanalyse des Kindes (Vienna: Internaler Psa. Verlag, 1932).
See also M. Klein, The Psycho-Analysis of Children (London: Hogarth, 1932).
E. Jones, “Mensajes de cordialidad,” Revista de Psicoanálisis, 1, no. 1 (1943) 3.
See M. Plotkin, Freud in the Pampas. The emergence and development of a psychoanalytic culture in Argentine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 60–61.
See J. Balán, Cuéntame tu vida: una biografía colectiva del psicoanálisis argentino (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1991) and Plotkin, Freud in the Pampas.
For example, in August 1943, Pichon Rivière presented a communication in the APA on the “dynamisms of epilepsy,” employing already many Kleinian categories. See E. Pichon Rivière, “Los dinamismos de la epilepsia,” Revista de Psicoanálisis, 1, no. 3 (1944) 340–381. Reissued in 1983 in La psiquiatría, una nueva problemática. Del psicoanálisis a la psicología social, volume 2 (Buenos Aires: Nueva Vision, 1983), pp. 91–134. Langer would do as much the same year, explaining the “psychology of menstruation” in terms of oral sadism and internal fantasies.
M. Langer, “Psicología de la menstruacion.” Revista de Psicoanálisis, 2, no. 2 (1944) 211–232. Garma would wait until the following year to praise Klein’s ideas on the psychogenesis of maniac-depressive states.
See P. Heimann, “A contribution to the problem of sublimation and its relations to the process of internalisation,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 23 (1942) 8–17.
This article was reviewed by A. Garma in Revista de Psicoanálisis, 3 no. 1 (1945) 171–172.
For a more detailed study of some of the first Kleinian papers in the Revista de Psicoanálisis, see H.R. Etchegoyen and S. Zysman, “Melanie Klein in Buenos Aires: Beginnings and developments,” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 86, no. 3 (2005) 869–894.
In that period, with the help of his wife, Cárcamo had written the first Spanish translation of Anna Freud’s The Ego and the mechanisms of defence (London: Hogarth, 1937), published as El yo y los mecanismos de defensa (Buenos Aires: Paidos, 1949). See Plotkin, Freud in the Pampas, p. 247.
See M. Langer, ‘El mito del “niño asado”’ Revista de Psicoanálisis, 7, no. 3 (1950) 389–401
and M. Langer, Maternidad y sexo (Buenos Aires: Paidos, 1951).
Bela Székely (1892–1955) was a Hungarian psychologist who had studied in Hamburg and Vienna. He practiced psychoanalysis in Budpest, between 1935 and 1937. In 1938, he arrived in Buenos Aires, where he founded the Sigmund Freud Institute. In a very atypical career, he finished by combining his Adlerian ideas with an interest for psychological tests. See G. García, La entrada del psicoanálisis en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Altazor, 1978), p. 179.
See also G. García, El psicoanálisis y los debates culturales. Ejemplos argentinos (Buenos Aires: Paidos, 2005).
M. Klein, ‘Primeros estadios del conflicto de Edipo y de la formacion del superyo’, Revista de Psicoanálisis 1, no. 1 (1943) 83–110.
See also M. Langer, From Vienna to Managua. Journey of a psychoanalyst (London: Free Association Books, 1989), p. 195.
See A. Aberastury, Teoría y técnica del análisis de niños (Buenos Aires: Paidos, 1962). The dates and the information given in this book are not always very accurate.
It is very likely that Aberastury read the American version of Anna Freud’s Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis (New York: Ayer Company Publishers, 1928). This book would not appear in England until 1946. As to Sophie Morgenstern, the reference was an article of 1939: ‘Le symbolisme et la valeur psychanalytique des dessins infantiles’, Revue française de Psychanalyse, 12, no. 1 (1939) 39–48.
A. Aberastury, ‘Actualizaciones de la técnica kleiniana en psicoanálisis de niños’, Revista de Psicoanálisis, 31, no. 5/6 (1983) 21–46.
While Freud argued that the psychotic got away from reality because of the Id, Garma affirmed that he yielded masochistically to the sadism of the Superego, which implied a drive renunciation (because of the Id’s repression) as well as the abandon of reality. A. Garma, ‘La realidad y el ello en la esquizofrenia’, Archivos de Neurobiología, 11, no. 6 (1931) 598–616. Republished in 1932 in Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, no. 18, 183–200 (as “Realität und Es in der Schizophrenie”) and in 1944 in Revista de Psicoanálisis, 2, no. 1, 56–82, with the title ‘La realidad exterior y los instintos en la esquizofrenia’.
P. Heimann, ‘A contribution to the problem of sublimation and its relations to the process of internalisation’, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 23 (1942) 8–17.
Reviewed by A. Garma, in Revista de Psicoanálisis, 3, no. 1 (1945) 171–172.
See A. Garma, ‘Vida y obra de Karl Abraham’, Revista de Psicoanálisis, 26 (1969) 463–483.
Later on, Arnaldo Rascovsky, converted to Kleinism, would push this mandate to the limit, theorising the existence of a ‘foetal psyche’. See A. Rascovsky, ‘Beyond the oral stage’, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 37, no. 4/5 (1956) 286–289
and A. Rascovsky, El psiquismo fetal (Buenos Aires: Paidos, 1960).
Enrique Pichon Rivière, interviewed by Vicente Zito Lema, Buenos Aires, 1976. See V Zito Lema, Conversaciones con Enrique Pichon Rivière sobre el arte y la locura, 13th edn (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Cinco, 1980) [1st edn: Buenos Aires: Timmerman Editores, 1976], p. 49.
See H. Vezzetti, Aventuras de Freud en el páıs de los argentinos (Buenos Aires: Paidos, 1996), pp. 253–258.
See A. Dagfal, ‘El pensamiento frances en la Argentina: el caso de los “discursos psi”’ Conceptual, estudios de psicoanálisis, 6, no. 7 (2006) 11–16.
See S. Resnik, ‘Préface’ in W. Baranger (ed.), Position et objet dans l’œuvre de Melanie Klein (Paris: Eres, 1999), pp. 11–16.
See é. Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan & Co.: a history of psychoanalysis in France, 1925–1985 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
Letter from Melanie Klein to Arminda Aberastury, February 7, 1952. Quoted by S. Fendrik, Desventuras del psicoanálisis (Buenos Aires: Espasa Calpe, 1993), pp. 48–49.
A. Aberastury, ‘Quelques observations sur le transfert et le contre-transfert dans la psychanalyse d’enfants’, Revue franc¸aise de psychanalyse, 16, no. 1/2 (1952) 230–253;
E. Pichon Rivière, ‘Quelques observations sur le transfert chez des patients psychotiques’, Revue franc¸aise de psychanalyse, 16, no. 1/2 (1952) 254–262.
M. Klein, ‘Les origines du transfert’, Revue franc¸aise de psychanalyse, 16, no. 1/2 (1952) 204–214.
The same year, it was published in English as M. Klein, ‘The Origins of Transference’, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 33 (1952) 433–438.
See A. Garma, ‘Origine et symbolisme des ve’tements’, Revue franc¸aise de Psychanalyse, 14, no. 1 (1950) 60–81;
A. Garma, J.C. Bisi and A. Felgueras, ‘Les agressions du surmoi maternel et la régression orale-digestive dans la genèse de l’ulcère gastro-duodénale’, Revue franc¸aise de Psychanalyse, 15, no. 4 (1951) 527–557;
M. Langer, ‘Le mythe de l’enfant rôti’, Revue franc¸aise de Psychanalyse, 16 (1952) 509–517.
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© 2009 Alejandro Dagfal
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Dagfal, A. (2009). Paris-London-Buenos Aires: The Adventures of Kleinian Psychoanalysis between Europe and South America. In: Damousi, J., Plotkin, M.B. (eds) The Transnational Unconscious. The Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230582705_8
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