ABSTRACT
Melanie Klein suffered from periodic depression. Her depression began with several bereavements during her youth and adolescence ± and became a continuous strand running through her life (Segal 1979). These experiences doubtless lent themselves to an intimate understanding of depression, and therefore they played a vital role in the direction of her theoretical explorations as well as in her creative output generally. They would certainly have inspired her best known concept of a psychological substrate for depression throughout the lifecycle.
