Journul of the History of the Behavioral Sciences Volume 32, January 1996

MELANIE KLEIN AND ANNA FREUD: THE DISCOURSE OF THE EARLY DISPUTE
RUSSELL VINER

Divisions in the field of the psychoanalysis of children can be traced to a dispute over the infantile super-ego between the theorists Melanie Klein and Anna Freud beginning in 1927. These divisions are understood within the analytic world as the result of scientific disputation between alternative valid theories. An examination of the language, claims, and epistemology of Kleins and Freuds publications in 1927 that marked the public commencement of the conflict, reveals a personalized discourse in which authority was derived from the allegiance, experience,and personal analytic standing of the contestants as much as from theoretical insight. The structure and rhetoric of the debate suggest that, rather than terminating the dispute, the publications of 1927 served to encourage professionalization in child analysis and establish Anna Freud and Melanie Klein as authoritative alternative theorists.

Child psycho-analysis in the 1990s remains a field without conceptual unity, dominated since 1927 by a conflict between the two dominant schools founded by the early child analysts, Melanie Klein and Anna Freud. In response to the publication by Anna Freud of a critique of Klein in her early 1927 monograph, Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis, Melanie Klein published an extremely critical rebuttal in the May 1927 issue of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. This exchange exposed the conflicting and contradictory nature of Kleins and Anna Freuds conceptions of the mind of the child, and the schools founded by the two theorists remain divided today on major aspects of theory and technique. The only presently available histories of child analysis derive from the traditions of the two schools as derived from the recollections of their founder. Such histories are of limited historical value, in that they tell of the natural emergence of modern analytic method, privileging certain analytic ideas and personalities as a result of the authors analytic allegiances. Serving professional rather than historical purposes, these histories of child analysis are concerned most to establish the primacy of the founder of that school, and the position of that school within the orthodox tradition that began with Sigmund Freuds analysis of Little Hans in 1909.2 The explanations of the enduring conflict between Melanie Klein and Anna Freud offered by these histories are predicated upon assumptions of the scientific nature of psycho-analysis, with the lack of paradigmatic unity in the field seen as the result of an objective debate between alternative scientific theories. Not surprisingly in the psychoanalytic field, analytic interpretations of the behavior of historical actors accompany such positivist explanations; for example, recent biographies of both Anna Freud and Melanie Klein offer explanations of the technique and careers of their subject in terms of the childhood and family experiences of these analysts of ~ h i l d r e n . ~ Such privileged explanations of the early child analysis debate in terms of objective science or by analytic scrutiny, are unlikely to yield historical understanding of the actors and discourses involved in the early child analysis dispute. The history of child analysis has been of little interest t o historians from outside the analytic milieu, and
RUSSELL VINERis a pediatrician and medical historian working at the Cambridge Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine. Correspondence address: Clare College, Cambridge CB2 I TL England.

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an examination of the epistemology, language, and context of the original dispute has not been attempted; however, such a history promises a more meaningful understanding of the origins of the enduring divisions in child analysis than is presently available.
OF THE PRE-HISTORY
THE

DISPUTE

It is appropriate here to examine the events leading up to the 1927 debate on child analysis. Freuds publication of Little Hans in 1909 is the first known analysis of a child, and became the reference point for all following analyses of children. Freud wished to gain supporting evidence for his theories on infantile sexuality, and it was the presence of the childs father as the proximate analyst that allowed Freud to overcome the fears of the time regarding the analysis of children. It was only because the authority of a father and of a physician were united in a single person, and because in him both affectionate care and scientific interest were combined, that it was possible in this one instance to apply the method to a use to which it would not have otherwise have lent i t ~ e l f . ~ Little Hans granted authority to analysts to over-ride their fears that rummaging in the supposedly fragile unconscious of a child could result in disaster, although Freuds preconditions initially limited child analysis to the children of analysts or analysands. While Melanie Klein and Anna Freud were to later discard Freuds restrictions and extend child analysis outside the analytic milieu, identity with Freuds Little Hans technique was to be an important weapon in the 1927 child analysis dispute. The first to systematicallyanalyze children was Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, who began work with children in Vienna soon after Little Hans, publishing her work as The Technique of Child Analysis in 1920. Seeing the analysis of children as primarily educational and normative, Hug-Hellmuth denied that analysis analagous to adult methods was possible in young children, and embargoed penetration of the depths of childhood neurosis. Initially gaining the enthusiastic support of Sigmund Freud, who recommended her technique for the upbringing of his grandson Ernst, this reclusive woman founded no school around her technique. Her later years were clouded by accusations of fraud concerning her publication of A Young Girls Diary, the purported anonymous diary of a teenage girl which seemed to confirm analytic theories about the sexual development of children, and by her sensational murder by her nephew and analysand in 1924. Recent scholarship has sought to claim a more prominent place for Hug-Hellmuth in the history of child analysis, and has raised suggestions of the suppression of her memory by her successors Klein and Anna Freud. The influence of her work on that of Melanie Klein and Anna Freud is difficult to assess, due to the resemblance between the work of Hug-Hellmuth and Anna Freud, and the use of this resemblance by Klein in the dispute with Anna Freud. While both Klein and Anna Freud were present at the presentation of Hug-Hellmuths work in The Hague Psycho-Analytic Congress in 1920, both later denied any debt to this early Viennese child analyst. Commencing the analysis of children from the end of the Great War, Melanie Klein claimed to have arrived at very different conclusions from Hug-Hellmuth as early as 1921. Claiming that an educational element was incompatible with true analysis, and that the Oedipus complex, which she dated two years earlier than Freud himself, should be analyzed as deeply as possible, Klein built a technique of child analysis between 1922 and 1926 in Berlin where she had the support of the influential president of the local Psycho-AnalyticSociety, Karl Abraham.6 Kleins work was also highly regarded in Ernest

RUSSELL VINER

Jones British Psycho-Analytic Society, and after the death of Abraham, Klein moved to the England that she saw as fertile ground for the creation of her school of child analysis in late 1926. Anna Freud recalled that her entry into child analysis was a response to Freuds call in 1918 to extend psycho-analysis into new fields after the war, and during her analytic training in the early 1920s, formed an informal study group in child analysis with the pedagogues August Aichhorn and Siegfried Bernfeld. With the foundation of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in 1925, Anna began a series of lectures on child analysis, a weekly course in Psychoanalytic Pedagogy for trainee analysts, teachers, and social workers, and published a journal with Bernfeld and Aichhorn, the Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalytische Piidugogik.8 From 1924, Anna Freud also took on considerable professional responsibilities, becoming Secretary of the new Vienna Institute and joining the inner circle of advisors to her ailing father. While both women attended the 1920 Hague presentation on child analysis by HugHellmuth, the first known professional contact between Klein and Anna Freud occurred in Berlin in December 1924, when Klein was invited to present her work to the Vienna Psycho-Analytic Society. Klein reported being very well received in Vienna; however, her work was received with great scepticism by Anna Freuds discussion group on child analysis. Prior to the exchanges of early 1927 that are the subject of this examination, neither Melanie Klein nor Anna Freud had expressed their reservations concerning their rival in public, aside from a brief critique of Kleins view of delinquency as a form of neurosis in Aichorns 1925 book, Wayward Youth. Melanie Klein had not long arrived in England when Anna Freud formalized the conflict between the two theorists by the release of her Viennese lecture series as Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis in early 1927, incorporating strong criticisms of Kleins technique. After Freuds presentation of her method to the Berlin Psycho-Analytic Society on 19 March 1927, where a written contribution by Melanie Klein was not discussed, Klein asked Ernest Jones to organize an English forum for her to reply to Anna Freuds critique. The resultant May Symposium on Child Analysis of the British Psycho-Analytic Society, published in the August issue of the British controlled International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, presented a strong rebuttal and critique of Anna Freuds method by Klein and five other members of the British Society. Subsequent papers presented by Melanie Klein and Anna Freud at the September Tenth International Psycho-Analytic Congress in Innsbruck and over the next decade continued the pattern of the original exchange, serving to further demarcate the differences between the two theorists rather than to close the debate. The events of early 1927 are significant as the first public declaration of the conflict between the two theorists, although Klein and Freud had recognized the other as an opponent since at least late 1924. The events of 1927 also served to expose and activate the networks of allies gained by Anna Freud and Melanie Klein since the mid 1920s, networks that would expand in the 1930s into the Kleinian and Freudian schools of child analysis. An examination of the language, arguments, and epistemological basis of the rival claims in the original 1927 publications, and the corresponding activity within the supportive networks allied with each therapist, promises an understanding of the nature of child analysis unavailable to existing histories of child analysis.
AND TECHNIQUE METHODS In this dispute, Anna Freud and Melanie Klein revealed markedly divergent views on the nature of the mind of the child and on the suitability of children for psycho-

MELANIE KLEIN AND ANNA FREUD

analysis. While both claimed to extend adult psycho-analysis to the child, fundamentally opposed concepts of the strength of the super-ego in small children led to the emergence of contradictory techniques in almost all elements of the analysis of children. Klein postulated a super-ego of great strength and severity as the basis of childhood neurosis. While control of the punitive nature of this super-ego was the aim of child analysis, the very strength of this area of the childs mind allowed the child to withstand a full and deep analysis of the adult model. She thus saw child analysis as a direct translation of the classical adult technique, involving the development of a transference neurosis between the child and the analyst, and requiring of the analyst the same techniques and discipline as the treatment of adults. In this model, the interpretation of free play during the sessions was directly substituted for the adult technique of free association, and the childs relationship with its parents fully explored. Seeing all children as potentially suitable for analysis, Klein repudiated any normative role for the therapist, and rejected a role for the parents in the treatment of their child. Anna Freud, on the contrary, believed the super-ego of a child to be weak and immature, and the child too dependent on its parents to tolerate the full analysis of the child-parent relationship. She thus saw child analysis as aiming to reinforce rather than dampen the strength of the super-ego. Rejecting the possibility of transference in a child still so dependent on its primary love-objects (parents), and having reservations about the sexual interpretation of much of a childs play, Anna Freud proposed a normative role for the therapist, whose aim was to become a part of the childs superego and to entice the child into analysis. As her technique required the active support of the parents and the development of a positive relationship with the child, Anna Freud saw child analysis as limited at this stage to the children of analysts or those in analysis themselves. THEFUNCTION OF
THE

DISPUTE

Given the fundamental opposition in their conception of the strength of the infantile super-ego, it is not surprising that Melanie Klein and Anna Freud saw each others technique as fatally flawed and potentially dangerous. While the exchange of publications in early 1927 was intended to debate the merits of the strong versus weak superego techniques, an examination of the form of the debate and of the representation of the contesting therapists, suggests that professional and personal objectives accompanied the scientific motor of the debate. The confrontational nature of Anna Freuds book, taking the form of a dialectic with a putative Klein, contrasting each element of her new technique with Kleins recorded views on the subject, reveals that Anna Freud perceived her technique as one that must necessarily oppose, and be seen as opposed to, that of Klein. This disputational element is enhanced by her publication of these dialectics in the form of lectures to a sceptical audience, one that needed to be convinced of the superiority of Annas ideas over those of Klein. This audience is left in no doubt of the fundamental and irresolvable disagreements between Klein and Freud on all o f the essential elements of analysis and their applicability to children, and on the necessity of choosing between the two techniques. Kleins answer in the May Symposium is equally confrontational, recognizing no common ground with Anna Freud. Klein claims All the means which we should regard as incorrect in the analysis of adults are especially stressed by Anna Freud as valuable in analysing children.12

RUSSELL VINER

The public depiction of Melanie Klein and Anna Freud as authoritative opposing theorists had implications for the formal structure and status of the new specialty of child analysis, and can be seen as part of the professionalization process in the schools of child analysis that Klein and Freud built around themselves from the late 1920s. Melanie Klein made no secret of her plans for the establishment and expansion of child analysis, admitting her ambitions for an English school to Ernest Jones in late 1926: A viable analytic basis, not only for my work but also for working for the establishment and expansion of child analysis seems to me to be given here. That which I was able to begin in Berlin, with the fervent and active support of Abraham, could in the most beautiful way be contrived and completed in London, if you will stand by me. I could make my contribution to the psycho-analysis movement, which I fervently desire, in London just as well as in Berlin.I3 Others have previously suggested that Annas 1927 book was written to serve as a manual for a school of child analysis, and the announcement of fundamental opposition to Klein inherent in this publication can be seen as part of the process of building a school of child analysis in Vienna.I4 This professionalization process for Anna Freud had already included the formation of a training system of seminars, the publication of a journal, and lectures on the history of child analysis. Melanie Klein and the British Society were to institute similar training schemes in the early 1930s. The debate and publications in 1927 served to formalize and articulate a conflict that had been building since at least the mid 1920s. While the main intent of the debate was to contest the technique of the rival therapist, the 1927 publications also served a professional purpose, functioning as a declaration by both sides of fundamental opposition and establishing the image of Klein and Freud as contesting authoritative therapists.
AND EPISTEMOLOGY AUTHORITY

The 1927 discussions were portrayed by Klein and Freud as an objective debate between authorities on points of theory and technique, and are generally understood in this fashion within the analytic community; however, an examination of the language of the 1927 debate reveals an experiential epistemology, where the source of authority for theory and practice lay with the experience of the analyst and their adherence to Freudian orthodoxy, rather than in theoretical insight, and where arguments were constructed as much around the personal analytic soundness of the rival theorists as in terms of rival concepts of the infantile super-ego.

Experience The principle criterion for the acceptability of knowledge in the debate was agreed by both sides to be the narrated experience of the contesting child analysts, rather than objective observational evidence or theoretical speculation. Both Melanie Klein and Anna Freud acknowledged that objective evidence played only a minor role in the development of child analysis technique, with anecdotal and experiential knowledge underpinning their techniques: we fall short of many scientific requirements and obtain our material where we can find it-much as we do in ordinary life if we wish to acquire detailed knowledge of another person. The anecdotal nature of disputation in child analysis was contrasted unfavorably with the impartial discourse of adult psychoanalysis by the British adult analyst Edward Glover:

MELANIE KLEIN AND ANNA FREUD

Whilst psycho-analysts are never lacking in vigour when it is necessary to defend analytic principles against encroachment from without or within the movement, their attitudes on most subjects of scientific discussion is characterised by a conspicuous absence of emotional bias. On one or two matters, however, it would appear that absence of empirical data sufficientto closure discussion gives rise to a more than usually animated expression of persozal opinion. I imagine that this is especially true of the subject of child analysis. This experiential epistemology is illustrated by the debate over Kleins interpretation of a childs actions during play. Anna Freud reproved Melanie Klein for the assumption that childs play is equivalent to the free association of the adult patient, and for seeking to interpret each single move in the play, suggesting that much of play is open to harmless interpretations. Regardless of the arguments Klein used to underpin her play technique, Freud asserted that experience alone must settle the question; an exchange of theoretical arguments does not easily settle the question of whether it is justified to equate the childs play actions with the adults free associations. The issue obviously must be left to be reviewed in the light of practical experience. In reply, Klein emphasized the authority of her long experience in contrast to Anna Freuds theoretical statement which contradicts practical experience. From what my own experience has taught me, then, I really can only emphatically combat Anna Freuds statement that both the methods used in adult analysis (namely free association and the interpretation of the transference reactions), in order to investigate the patients early childhood, fail us in analysing children. Similar claims for experiental authority are evident in the correspondence on child analysis between Ernest Jones and Sigmund Freud, Jones dismissed Annas conclusions as hasty and based upon such a slender basis of experience, concluding that the differences between the two theorists will be decided by experience, and not by argument.20 In his defense of his daughter, Sigmund Freud also emphasized the heuristic nature of progress in child analysis; In reality, Annas views on child analysis are independent of mine; I share her views, but she has developed them out of her independent experience. The use of personal experience as a criterion for the acceptability of knowledge in the debate focused attention firmly upon the persons of the contesting therapists as much as upon their techniques; consequently, as will be shown in the following sections, doctrinal differences were contested within a personalized discourse of orthodoxy, allegiance, and personal analytic standing.
Orthodoxy and Allegiance In the personalized epistemology of the debate, the adherence of Melanie Klein and Anna Freud to orthodox Freudian theory was claimed as an alternate source of authority, especially by Klein and her supporters. Anna Freud clearly recognized that criticism of her new technique would be situated within a debate on the validity of departures from the ideas of Sigmund Freud. Admitting that The procedures I presented to you contradict at too many points the rules of psycho-analytic technique as laid down for us in the past, Anna understood that the departures of her technique from classical method identified her with schismatictechniques previously repudiated by the analytic movement.

I am prepared for the practising analysts among you to say, after what they have heard here, that my methods with children are so different that they cannot be

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RUSSELL VINER

called real analysis at all, but are a form of wild analysis which has borrowed all its tools from analysis but in no way conforms to strict analytic principles.22 On the other side of the debate, Klein claimed the mantle of strict orthodoxy, identifying her technique as a direct translation of classical adult method in the manner of Sigmund Freuds analysis of little H a m z 3 Dismayed that Anna departs in so many respects from the proved analytic rules, because she thinks children are such diflerent beings from adults, Klein feared the doubt and uncertainty created by Annas questioning of analytic canon. A thorough resolution of the transference is regarded as one of the signs that an analysis has been satisfactorally [sic] concluded. On this basis, psycho-analysis has laid down a number of important rules which appear necessary in every case. Anna Freud sets aside those rules for the most part in child analysis. With her the transference, the clear recognition of which we know to be an important condition of our work, becomes an uncertain and doubtful concept.24 Others joined with Klein to fight the uncertainty inherent in Anna Freuds questioning of orthodox doctrine. Joan Riviere, a British lay analyst and supporter of Melanie Klein in the May Symposium, feared that Much of the knowledge of the human mind which psycho-analysis represents would seem to me invalidated and disproved if some of the recent propositions with regard to the analysis of children are held to be true and ju~tifiable.~~ Central to Melanie Kleins case against Anna Freud was the support apparently given by Freud in Little Hans for Kleins doctrine on the ability of the childs ego to withstand analysis. To Klein, Anna Freuds misgivings on the penetration of the Oedipal complex and the ability of the childs ego to withstand analysis, were exactly those that Freud had repudiated as a misconception of the true nature of psychoanalysis. This analysis[little Hans] was destined to be the foundation-stone of subsequent child-analysis. For not only did it show the presence and the evolution of the (Edipus complex in children and demonstrate the forms in which it operates in them; it showed also that these unconscious tendencies could safely and most profitably be brought into consciousness. Freud himself describes this discovery as follows: But I must now inquire what harm was done to Hans by dragging to light in him complexes such as are not only repressed by children but dreaded by their parents. Did the little boy proceed to take some serious action as regards what he wanted from his mother? or did his evil intentions against his father give place to evil deeds? Such misgivings will have no doubt occurred to many doctors, who misunderstand the nature of psycho-analysis and think that wicked instincts are strengthened by being made conscious.26 Anna Freud sought to justify her unorthodox technique by the immature and dependent nature of the childs mind with respect to the adults, claiming that It is evident that to deal with such different subjects, the method cannot remain the same. To distance herself from schismatic figures such as Jung, Adler, Reik and Otto Rank, who had traumatically broken with Freud after diverging from central psycho-analytic doctrine, Anna Freud stressed that, rather than seeking to revise psycho-analysis, she sought only to augment the analytic range by using a reduced technique to include new subjects. But consider if an adult neurotic came to your consulting room to ask for treatment, and on closer examination proved as impulsive, as undeveloped intellectually, and as deeply dependent on his environment as are my child patients, you would probably say Freudian analysis is a fine method, but is not designed for such

MELANIE KLEIN AND ANNA FREUD

11

people. And you would treat the patient by giving him a mixed method, giving him as much pure analysis as he can stand and for the rest child analysis because, owing to his infantile nature, he would merit nothing better.

In my opinion, it is no reflection on the analytic method, designed as it is for a single particular object, the adult neurotic, if one seeks to apply it with modifications to other types of objects. There is no harm in continuing to use it for other purposes. Only one should be at pains to know what one is doing.28 Despite the use of orthodoxy as a weapon against Anna Freud by Melanie Klein and her supporters, this use of Freudian authority did not enable Klein to settle the dispute in her favor. Anna Freud was successful in contesting these Kleinian claims of heresy among her Continental and American allies, establishing a widespread perception of her technique as conservative rather than radical, a view that Sigmund Freud articulated to his influential German colleague, Max Eitingon. Compared to the opinions of Klein, hers are conservative, one might even say reactionary, but it looks as if she is right.29 On the other side of the debate, Melanie Klein, seen by herself and her English supporters as a touchstone of orthodoxy, continued to be perceived on the Continent and America as a radical with disturbing ideas on the infantile super-ego, despite the congruence of these ideas with those of Sigmund Freud as revealed in Little Hans and in the contemporary Civilization and its Discontents (1929). the severity of the super-ego which a child develops in no way corresponds to the severity of treatment which he himself has met with;- [footnoteits has rightly been emphasised by Melanie Klein and by other, English, writers. These predominating views of Melanie Klein as radical and Anna Freud as conservative, suggest that the debate between the two theorists was read in terms of allegiance rather than theoretical orthodoxy, a reading made more potent by the siting of this debate against the recent defection by Freuds trusted colleague and secretary, Otto Rank, and widespread and increasing fears for Sigmund Freuds health.

Personal Elements in the Debate The personalized terms of this debate are made most clear by the extensive use of individual analytic soundness to discredit opposing views in this contest. Such claims were particularly directed against Anna Freud by the supporters of Melanie Klein, most vehement among them Ernest Jones, the leader of the British Psycho-Analytic Society. The contingency of personal accusation with the conflictual authorities of orthodoxy and experience, is demonstrated most clearly in this debate by Jones personal criticism of Anna to her father in mid May 1927.
The purely theoretical and academic objections sometimes raised [by Anna Freud], e.g. about the stability of the childs superego, etc., are completely answered by the test of experience, and I wonder if they are not sometimes displaced from a lingering doubt about the reality of the phenomena and the richness and capacity of the childs mind. All our experience shows how right were you [sic] in your conclusions in attributing to the infant a far greater maturity than had been suspected. . . . It is a pain to me that I cannot agree with of the tendencies in Annas book and I cannot keep thinking that they must be due to some imperfectly analysed resistances; in fact I think it is possible to prove them in detail. It is a pity

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she published the book so soon-her first lectures, but I hope she may prove as amenable as her father to further experience. This hope is strengthened by my admiration for all her other qualities-also analytic ones.31 Sigmund Freud refused to accept the authority of such personal attacks, reminding his bad mannered junior colleague that We are generally agreed to renounce arguments of this sort and, in the case of differences of opinion, to leave resolutions to advancements in empirical k n ~ w l e d g e . Despite ~ ~ Freuds rebuke, Jones went on to publish in August similar suggestions by Joan Riviere, Ella Sharpe, and himself, that it was Annas unanalyzed immaturity that led to fear full penetration of infantile neuroses. [Riviere] Psycho-analysis is Freuds great discovery of what goes on in the imagination of a child-and it still provokes great opposition in us all; this childishness, these unconscious phantasies, are abhorred and dreaded - and unwittingly longed for-by us even yet, and this is why even analysts still hesitate to probe these depths .33 [Sharpe] The problem of child analysis seems more subtly implicated with the analysts own deepest unexplored repressions than adult analysis. Rationalisations that the child is too young, that the weakness of the childs super-ego makes an admixture of pedagogy with analysis indispensible, and so on, are built upon the alarms of that very same infantile super-ego in the analyst that he has to deal with in the child before him. The infantile super-egoin the last resort becomes the dictator in the situation between analyst, child and parent, and only so far as that deepest level is analysed in the analyst can we look for scientific accuracy in the matter of child analysis.34 Outraged that Jones had ignored his interdiction on the public analysis of analysts, Sigmund Freud nevertheless committed himself to the personalized rhetoric of the debate, strongly reproaching Jones for indulging his primitive impulses. Are you pursuing a particular aim or are you yielding to your inclincation [sic] to make yourself unpleasant? . . . In London you are organising a regular campaign against Annas child analysis, accusing her of not having been deeply analysed enough, a reproach that you repeat in a letter to me. I had to point out to you that such a criticism is just as dangerous as it is impermissible. I can assure you that Anna has been analysed for longer and more thoroughly than, for example, yourself. The whole criticism is based on an irresponsible assumption that with some goodwill, could have been avoided. . . . Is this directed against me because Anna is my daughter? A nice motivation amongst analysts, who demand that others control their primitive impulse^.^' The vehement and intimate nature of the disagreements between Jones and Sigmund Freud revealed by the above exchange suggests that the dispute over child analysis became, for a time, the vehicle for what is commonly accepted as a long contest for power between Freud and the ambitious Jones. Sigmund Freud certainly recognized the combative nature of his relationship with Jones and its expression in this component of the child analysis debate, representing Jones at the time to his colleague Max Eitingon as a troublesome adolescent in need of stronger parenting.
I did not conceal anything towards Jones and condemned severely the frivolity, the bad intentions, and the incredible theoretical nonsense that appeared [in the May Child Analysis Symposium]. Among other things, I got personal and told him that Anna certainly was analysed for a longer time and more profoundly than he. The result of this cold water treatment has to be awaited. As you are now specialising in making peace, I can over the aggression. Together then, we will represent the typical father figure.

takee

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13

While Joness reservations concerning the soundness of Anna Freuds personal analysis were not supported publicly by Melanie Klein, the two shared a belief that Anna Freud fundamentally misunderstood the nature of psycho-analysis. Jones claimed that those such as Anna Freud who had reservations regarding the childs ego control of the id, misunderstood the nature of neurosis. According to this view, the conflict in the neuroses that undeniably exists even at this early age would appear to be between the childs nature and the parental influence. In other words, it would be essentially an external conflict between individuals, and not, as we see with adults, an internal one within an individual mind. it would thus differ in essence from all other neuroses previously in~estigated.~? To Klein, such departures from standard analytic techniques suggested a fundamental misunderstanding of the structure of the mind as revealed by Freud. She departs in so many respects from the proved analytic rules because she thinks that children are such different beings from adults. Yet the sole purpose of all these elaborate measures is to make the child like the adult in his attitude to analysis. This seems contradictory and I think is to be explained by the fact that in her comparisons Anna Freud puts the Cs [conscious]and the ego of the child and the adult in the foreground, while we (though we give all necessary consideration to the ego) surely have to work first and foremost with the Ucs [unconsci~us].~~ Both Jones and Klein saw in Anna Freuds reservations on the ego-strength of children an echo of older objections to psycho-analysis that neuroses were safer repressed and buried than revealed by Sigmund Freuds risky methods. Concurring with Jones that The battle of psycho-analysis is being fought out once more in child analysis, Klein reminded Anna Freud that the elder Freud had repudiated those with such misgivings, who, misunderstandthe nature of psycho-analysisand think that wicked instincts are strengthened by being made conscious.39 CONCLUSION Analysts of children remain divided today on major aspects of theory and technique, and this divide can be traced to the earliest publications of the debate between Melanie Klein and Anna Freud. These publications reveal that by 1927, Klein and Anna Freud had developed radically different and indeed contradictory ideas about the minds of children. The irreconcilability of their doctrines on fundamental issues of theory and technique formed the debate in terms of the contesting experiences of the rival therapists, and focused the conflictual discourse upon the persons and positions of Klein and Freud. The development of these methods of child analysis within a contemporary analytic discourse of orthodoxy and allegiance is reflected in the use of these criteria as authorities within the debate itself. The language and structure of the child analysis dispute suggest that, rather than terminating the debate, the publications of 1927 served to establish the position of Klein and Freud as alternative authorities and encourage professionalization in child analysis.
NOTES
1. Anna Freud, Introduction to the Technique o f Child Analysis, originally published in German in early 1927 was first aired in Berlin in March 1927. This work is now available in Four Lectures on Psychoanalysis, The Writingsof Anna Freud Volume I: Introduction to Psychoanalysis, 1922-1925 (NY: International Universities Press, 1974), pp. 3-69; Melanie Klein, Symposium on Child Analysis, International Journal ofPsychoAnalysis 8 (1927): 339-391.

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2. Sigmund Freud, Analysis of a Phobia in a five year-old Boy (1909)- the first known case of the analysis of a child. Recent biographies of Anna Freud, Elisabeth Young-Breuhl, Anna Freud. (London: Pan Macmillan, 1991) and Melanie Klein, Phyllis Gross-Kurth, Melanie Klein: Her World and Her Work (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1985) have come from scholars with allegiances within the analytic tradition. All other histories of child analysis and the Freud-Klein dispute also originate from within the analytic milieu, e.g., Anna Freud, A Short History of Child Analysis, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 21 (1967): 7-14; E. J. Anthony, A Brief History of Child Psychoanalysis, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 25 (1986): 8-1 1; Sylvia Brody, Contributions to Child Analysis, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 29 (1974): 13-30; J. M. Hughes, Reshaping the Analytic Domain: The Work of Melanie Klein, W. R. D. Fairbairn, and D. W. Winnicott (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Janet Sayers, Mothering Psychoanalysis: Helene Deutche, Karen Horney, Anna Freud & Melanie Klein (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1991). Also see The Freud-Klein Controversies 1941-45, Pearl King and Riccardi Steiner, Eds. (London: Tavistock Routledge, 1991) which provides an extensive discussion of the later conflict from within the analytic tradition. 3. Young-Breuhl, Anna Freud, Gross-Kurth, Melanie Klein. Young-Breuhl calls her work an analytic biography, Gross-Kurths biography of Klein is less overtly analytic. 4. Sigmund Freud, Analysis of a Phobia in a Five year old Boy, (1909), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, James Strachey, Ed. (London: Hogarth Press, 1953-1964), p. 5. 5. See Hermine Hug-Hellmuth: Her life and work, George Maclean and Ulrich Rappen, Eds. (London: Routledge, 1991), and A Young Girls Diary, D. Gunn and P. Guyomard, Eds. (London: Unwin & Hyman, 1990). 6. Melanie Klein, Symposium on Child Analysis, p. 340. 7. Anna Freud, A Short History of Child Analysis, pp. 7-14. 8. Initially published in Switzerland, but later moved to Vienna. Continued after World War I1 in America as The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. 9. Letters of Alix Strachey to James Stracehy, 14 December 1924, and 12 January 1925, in Bloomsbury Freud: The Letters of James and Alix Strachey, 1924-1925, Perry Meisel & Walter Kendrick, Eds. (London: Chatto & Windus, 1986); Letter of Sigmund Freud to Ernest Jones, 22 July 1925, The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones, 1908-1939, R. A. Paskauskas, Ed. (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1993) (hereafter referred to as Correspondence) pp. 578-579. 10. August Aichorns Wayward Youth (London: Putnam, 1936) (first German edition 1925). 11. Symposium on Child Analysis of the British Psychoanalytic Association, May 4 & 18, 1927(speakersMelanie Klein, Joan Riviere, Nina Searle, Ella Sharpe, Edward Glover, Ernest Jones). International Journal of Psychoanalysis 8 (1927): 339-391. 12. Melanie Klein, Symposium on Child Analysis, p. 343. 13. Letter of Melanie Klein to Ernest Jones, 24 October 1926, quoted in Grosskurth, Melanie Klein, p. 161. 14. Young-Breuhl, Anna Freud, p. 165. 15. Anna Freud, Writings, p. 51. 16. Edward Glover, Symposium on Child Analysis, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis8 (1927): 385. 17. Anna Freud, Writings, pp. 38-39. 18. Anna Freud, Writings, p. 39. 19. Melanie Klein, Symposium on Child Analysis, p. 355. 20. Ernest Jones to Sigmund Freud, 30 September 1927, Correspondence, pp. 625-632; Ernest Jones, Symposium on Child Analysis, p. 391. 21. Sigmund Freud to Ernest Jones, 23 September 1927, Correspondence, pp. 623-625. 22. Anna Freud, Writings, pp. 19, 68-69. 23. Melanie Klein, Symposium on Child Analysis, pp. 339-340. 24. Melanie Klein, Symposium on Child Analysis, pp. 343, 354. 25. Joan Riviere, Symposium on Child Analysis, p. 370. 26. Melanie Klein, Symposium on Child Analysis, p. 339-Klein quotes from Little Hans, Collected Papers of Sigmund Freud, Vol. III, pp. 284-285. The italics are Kleins. 27. Anna Freud, Writings, p. 5. 28. Anna Freud, Writings, pp. 68-69. 29. Letter of Sigmund Freud to Max Eitingon, November 1926, quoted in Young-Breuhl, Anna Freud, p. 163. 30. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents VII (1929/1939) in Sigmund Freud, Civilization, Society and Religion, Albert Dickson, Ed. (Penguin) p. 323.

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31. Ernest Jones to Sigmund Freud, 16 May 1927, Correspondence, pp. 617-618. 32. Sigmund Freud to Ernest Jones, 31 May 1927, Correspondence, pp. 618-619. 33. Joan Riviere, Symposium on Child Analysis, p. 376. 34. Ella Sharpe, Symposium on Child Analysis, p. 384. 35. Sigmund Freud to Ernest Jones, 23 September, 1927, Correspondence, pp. 623-625. 36. Letter of Sigmund Freud to Max Eitingon, 23 September 1927, quoted in Young-Breuhl, Anna Freud, p. 171. 37. Ernest Jones, Symposium on Child Analysis, p. 390. 38. Melanie Klein, Symposium on Child Analysis, pp. 343-344. 39. Ernest Jones, Symposium on Child Analysis, p. 390; Melanie Klein, Symposium on Child Analysis, p. 339-Klein quotes from Little Hans-see Footnote number 26; the italics are Kleins.