ABSTRACT
This paper derives from a lecture given in 1955 at the Nineteenth International Psychoanalytic Congress in Geneva and elaborated in 1956 in a lecture to the British Society of Psychoanalysis where a distinctive Kleinian school had been established after World War II. Later, in 1957, the ideas were expanded into one of Klein’s major books, Envy and Gratitude. The paper presents Klein’s most mature view of the world of the very young baby. She puts forward the idea that the baby’s envy of the mother is of fundamental importance to its psychical development. The idea proved immediately controversial rather like Freud’s idea of the death drive. Juliette Mitchell comments that, ‘the notion was found unobservable’ (Mitchell 1986: 211) as envy was perceived as too sophisticated an emotion for the very young baby to experience. Klein’s parallel introduction of the idea of gratitude as a balancing emotion caused less discussion even though the debate about envy and gratitude still continues today.
