Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

the absoluteness’ (JG 414-421). ‘Melanie Klein’s whole theory is religious’ (JG1481) with
doctrines, such as forgiveness, that ‘smacks for me of … a certain, a moralism. I don’t …
like’ (AP 695-696). Consequently the term ‘Kleinian’ is pejorative. People feel passionate
about Kleinian ideas offering a distinctive and rigorous clinical approach that goes ‘earlier
and deeper’ (JG 227). Yet ‘I worry about the word Kleinian’ (DB 324) and some still see
the influence of Klein as negative despite their training or analyses being ‘Kleinian’.
Another chose their analyst ‘not because they were Kleinian, because I liked them, because
I was inspired by the way they spoke about their patients and because they touched me in
very particular ways’ (AL 108-110). In the Independent tradition 400 Klein 401 is seen as
giving important but partial insight alongside Winnicott, Fairbairn, Bion and Balint. 402
A group including Grotstein emerged in Los Angeles in the 1960s influenced by British
Kleinians, Mason and Bion. 403 Their papers were rejected because they advocated Kleinian
ideas and people ‘suffered greatly’ (JG 810) for supporting Klein and Bion. 404 British
Kleinians rejected Bion’s later work though Grotstein’s unique Kleinian-Bionian synthesis
has taken up his ideas. 405 The interviewees identified as Kleinian often chose to qualify this
by the addition of insights from Winnicott and Bion. Klein has been a vital figure for
Grotstein 406 as part of the psychoanalytic corpus that incorporates Fairbairn, Bion,
Winnicott, and Blanco but on different philosophical foundations. Throughout there was a
dislike of being labelled as Kleinian or post-Kleinian, but Klein offers an alternative
400 See Kohon’s brief history of the Independent tradition (Kohon 1986).
401 And some of her followers, Segal and Rosenfeld were mentioned.
402 ‘I feel that who I have become is a mixture of all these things’ (AL 114).
403 The exact nature of Bion’s Kleinian standing still polarizes opinions (Grotstein 2007).
404 A first person account can be found in Grotstein’s recollections of this period (Grotstein 2002a).
405 ‘It’s going to be a radical revolution of the Kleinian mode … for instance I will take issue with Mrs Klein
on her use of the death instinct’ (JG 611). See Grotstein’s later work (Grotstein 2009a, 2009b).
406 Appearing in an early dream that shaped his work (Grotstein 2000).
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