ABSTRACT
Focusing on language can also transform the reading of non-fiction texts, particularly psychoanalytic ones, and show how continuous they are with literature. In Chapter 9, an account of Virginia Woolf and Melanie Klein, I will show how an attentiveness to what Woolf’s style shares with Freud’s also allows us to see what Woolf shares with Klein, with whom she became acquainted in 1926 when Klein moved to London under Bloomsbury’s auspices. More important than the considerable appropriation of Klein’s ideas in To the Lighthouse (1927), particularly a reassessment of gender from the point of view of Klein’s theory of part-objects, is the way in which reading Woolf and Klein side by side also leads to a welcome way of reading style and structure in Klein’s essays. Literary in their own right, they enact Klein’s theories in the transactions they promote between Klein and her reader. These literary transactions also allow Klein to overcome her anxiety of influence in relation to Freud. The style and structure of Klein’s essays are reflections of her theories. Each is an exemplification of the other.
