ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Klein's development both of an analytic technique for work with very young children and of new theoretical ideas evolving from these cases; she was gradually to account for the clinical phenomena with eventually more formal theorization of the significance of the data she had encountered. It presents the evidence for Klein's relatively speedy development of her child analysis technique in the 1920s, highlighting certain of her new theoretical views from this period, especially her innovatory approach to dealing with the phenomenon of the negative transference. The chapter gives evidential support from Klein's papers, with relevant vignettes of her child patients, illustrating their varied reactions in the setting of young-child analysis (e.g., transference interpretation, comment, play). The political—and politicized—character and focus of analytic papers in publication needs to be recognized as a context for Klein's publications. The chapter discusses the phenomenon of the slow development of child analysis.
