Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, and the Psychoanalysis of Children and Adolescents

Book excerpt: The central theme of this book is concerned with the controversies on technique between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein in the 1920s and 1930s, and with a clear differentiation between child analysis proper and analytical child psychotherapy. Alex Holder takes into account the historic background in which child psychoanalysis developed, especially World War II and the Nazi regime in Germany. The author also looks at the way child psychoanalysis developed in specific institutions, such as the Hampstead Child Therapy Course in London, and in specific areas, such as the spread of child analysis in the US. The concluding chapter is on the importance of knowledge of child analysis among psychoanalysts working with adults. The differences in the theories of the two "greats" in child analysis, Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, are examined one by one, including such concepts as the role of transference, the Oedipus complex and the superego.