Melanie Klein

British Austrian born psychoanalyst (1882–1960)

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United Kingdom rank#249

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Fame55.5
Momentum0.0
United Kingdom rank#249
Academics rank#203
Wikipedia14.1K

Lived 1882–1960, aged 78United Kingdom

United Kingdom AcademicsAcademic

Wikipedia
47 languages
Cross-language footprint
Rank in United Kingdom
#249
Academics
Era
1882–1960
Aged 78
Awards
1
recognised work

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

She argued that infants split the world into good and bad long before they have words for it — and that this pre-verbal fracture shapes every neurosis that follows.

Biography

About

Melanie Klein was born in Vienna on 30 March 1882. She became an Austrian-British psychoanalyst who made child analysis her life's work, eventually becoming the central architect of object relations theory. Klein focused on ambivalence and moral ambiguity as engines of development. She proposed that pre-verbal existential anxiety in infancy drives the unconscious to split the world into good and bad idealizations. Resolution of that split, she believed, depends on the child's constitution and the quality of nurturing received — and the outcome determines what distresses surface later in life.…

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