Book
Female Genius, Volume II: Melanie Klein
Le Génie féminin, tome II: Melanie Klein
The middle volume of Kristeva's trilogy on female genius, between the volumes on Hannah Arendt and Colette, is devoted to Melanie Klein, whom Kristeva presents as the most original innovator in psychoanalysis after Freud. It follows Klein's life and her quarrels in the British Society, and sets out her concepts: the analysis of children through play, early anxiety, the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, envy and gratitude, and the matricide on which thought depends. Ross Guberman's English translation, Melanie Klein, was published by Columbia University Press in 2001.
Main ideas
- Klein is presented as the most original innovator in psychoanalysis after Freud.
- Klein's life is followed together with her quarrels in the British Society.
- Play is the means of child analysis, and early anxiety is its object.
- The paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, envy and gratitude are set out as Klein's central concepts.
- Matricide is the precondition of thought.
- The book belongs to a trilogy on Arendt, Klein and Colette that, in Kelly Oliver's reading, offers women's attention to the senses as a remedy for nihilism.
What it shows
Melanie Klein influenced Julia Kristeva
Kristeva drew on Klein’s account of the archaic mother, matricide and the depressive position from Soleil noir onward, and devoted the second volume of Le Génie féminin (2000) to her.