ABSTRACT
In the Melanie Klein Archive file PP/KLE/D.29, in the Wellcome Library, are to be found five pages of notes from 1953 on countertransference. Klein also discusses her views on this subject in archive file PP/KLE/C.72, dating from 1958. Because of the paucity of references to countertransference in Klein’s published writings these notes, now digitized and available to consult online, fill in our knowledge. Her views were provoked by the work her students were doing in their experimental analyses of schizophrenic patients. Apocryphal stories suggest that Klein remained aligned with Freud’s view of countertransference as simply interference. This archival material confirms that, whilst there is some truth in that, she did have a more sophisticated and nuanced view of the unconscious relations between analyst and analysand. The author gives his findings in the context of the development of the Klein group in the British Psychoanalytical Society.
