ABSTRACT

No attempt has hitherto been made to construct from the existing documents an approximate idea of the scope of Klein’s psychoanalytic experiences with children and adolescents in Berlin. Instead, the mainly rather cursory references to this subject comprise inaccurate or simply incorrect statements concerning Klein’s practice in Berlin. The latter range from the claim that Klein had hardly any practical experience (Biermann, 1968, p. 44) to the statement that Klein treated ‘mostly the children of colleagues’ (Grosskurth, 1986, p. 101), and Grosskurth’s demonstrably incorrect thesis that the treatments of the children referred to as Ernst, Felix, Lisa and Grete in her published work were in fact treatments of her own children. The inaccuracies include Petot’s statement that ‘in 1922 . . . she began work at the Polyclinic’ (Petot, 1990, p. 9), when she actually began in February 1921, and his assumption that Rita had daily sessions (p. 107), whereas in fact Klein generally saw Rita three times weekly in the first few months (March to August), visiting Rita almost daily only in the final month of treatment. Hughes’ statement that ‘initially the analyses had taken place in the child’s own nursery’ (Hughes, 1989, p. 67) applies only to Rita’s analysis in 1923, because in 1921 Klein began her treatments at the Polyclinic. Petot’s statement that Egon’s analysis ‘was conducted between 1927 and 1928’ (1990, p. 212) within the London period is also wrong – it took place earlier in Berlin – as is the time to which he provisionally allocates Klein’s ‘encounter with infantile psychosis’ (Petot, 1990, p. 211). Similarly, Hinshelwood’s ‘Chronology’ of the treatment technique, specifying for example ‘1921 – Using toys and play’ (Hinshelwood, 1989b, p. 9), appears questionable.