Case Study Of Melanie Klein: The Mother Of Object Relations Theory

Melanie Klein: Known as the "Mother of object Relations theory", was born in Vienna, Austria. this Austrian- British psychoanalyst had a huge impact on child psychology and developmental psychology with her innovation of "play therapy" technique and Object Relations theory. She initially was ambitious about attending medical school but after getting married and setteling with her husband in Budapest, she began studying with psychoanalyst Sandor Ferenczi. she then came up with "play therapy" which is widely used even today. this theory talks about how a child can express himself or herself through recreational play. this therapy helps a child understand and resolve its psychosocial challanges. this therapy can help in diagnosis of any type

this takes the role of free association in a child. When talked about free association, one name clearly comes to our mind- Signmund Freud. She got an opportunity to meet Freud and this meeting inspried her to write her first paper which was on Development of a child. However, her theories counter argued Signmund Freud and Anna frueds Theories. When Anna frued has said that children could not be psychoanalysed, Klein disagreed. Although she questioned Freuds belifs, she was his contemporary and was laughed at to counter agrue with Frued.She agrgued that Frued's psychosexual stages could be rested on the relationship of the mother and the child. Her agrument was more on the breast of the mother( being the object, as per the object relation theory. object relation theory talks about building a psyche as per the relationship one holds with the environment.) rather than sexual drives as given by Frued. Frued would give an idea of intrapsychic conflict wheras Klein would relate it to the relationship of the child and the environment. However, she worked with a lot of children and strenghtened the baseline

she specialised in psychology of women in different phases of their lives and this lead her to write her book called "Psychoanalysis of the Sexual Functions of Women". Helene was born to Jewish parents and since getting formal education for women was hard she got education from private language school which helped her in joining the University of Vienna in Austria. She had a strong bond with her father but her relationship with her mother was cold. She, just like many another woman psychologists had faced sexism and stereotype among women. She had a chance to work with Signmund Frued, her mentor. She had a chance to assist Frued. While she observed other women that frued recomended, Frued was analysing Helene. After a while it was reported that Helena developed feelings for Frued. She thought that Frued resembled to her father and loved Frued a lot. However, after sometime Frued terminated his analysis on Helene. Helene slight competition to Frued in writing about female psychology by pushing him to this field as he was a man who would not want to be left back. Helena formulised most of her theories based on her life itself. She looked at women and sexuality closely to find out where the problem arises. Few of her works include a two voume work on women psychology dealing with girls, their puberty, adulthood etc. She also wrote carefully