ABSTRACT
Melanie Klein's upbringing was liberal and easy-going, and she remembered her childhood as mostly serene and happy. Her father, Dr Moriz Reizes, came from a strictly orthodox Jewish family, and as he was considered by his parents to be very bright, they decided that he should become a Rabbi. Melanie married at the age of twenty-one, and for several years lived with her husband in small towns, first in Slovakia then in Silesia. In 1920, at a psychoanalytic congress in The Hague, Melanie Klein had met Karl Abraham and was deeply impressed by him. Anna Freud had started work with children at about the same time as Melanie Klein, but their approach was different and there was considerable controversy and conflict between the two. After Abraham's death, life in Berlin became difficult for Melanie Klein. In 1926 Melanie Klein established herself in England, where she was to remain until she died.
