El Genio Femenino 2: Melanie Klein

Le génie féminin #2

by Julia Kristeva

Sospechado de haber perdido sus “valores”, el siglo XX ha planteado sin embargo interrogantes que la humanidad nunca había abordado con tanta gravedad, riesgos y promesas: qué es la vida, dónde está la locura, qué pueden las palabras. Tres mujeres han sido sus exploradoras, lúcidas y apasionadas. Julia Kristeva rescata la producción de cada una de ellas como una fulguración genial dentro de la cultura, a través de un proyecto editorial en tres tiempos. Después de Hannah Arendt y la relación de sus escritos con la vida, este tomo explora la excepcionalidad con la que Melanie Klein (1882-1960) se sumerge en el tema de la locura, antes de abordar el vínculo de Colette con las palabras en el tercer y último volumen de esta serie: Mujeres extraordinarias que han marcado la historia del pensamiento, con obras producidas en el corazón de sus respectivos campos de saber y al mismo tiempo en sus márgenes. No verdaderamente excluídas, no verdaderamente marginales, Arendt Klein y Colette son inclasificables.

En este sentido, adquiere relevancia el gesto con el que Melanie Klein desafía el conformismo de los freudianos y, sin temer el riesgo de la infidelidad a la ortodoxia psicoanalítica de la época, inscribe una verdadera ruptura en la exploración del Edipo, el fantasma, el lenguaje y el prelenguaje. Klein desciende hasta el lugar sin lengua de la infancia inhibida, psicótica y autista y, como jefa de escuela, habla, sistematiza, guía a su clan. Atacada por loca o por dogmática, opacada por las figuras masculinas centrales del psicoanálisis, fue sin embargo una de sus innovadoras más importantes. Experimentó y estudió las fantasías violentas y reparadoras de la maternidad y comprendió como nadie el dolor y la creatividad del matricidio. Su vida y su obra, leídas como trayectorias de un desamparo, se sitúan en el corazón de un siglo y revelan desde allí su malestar.

Julia Kristeva es de origen búlgaro y vive en Francia desde la década del sesenta. Su numerosa obra ensayística abarca los campos de la lingüística, la semiología, el psicoanálisis, la filosofía y la teoría literaria.

Genres: Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Biography

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII and author of many acclaimed works. Her Columbia University Press books include Hatred and Forgiveness (2012); The Severed Head: Capital Visions (2014); and, with Philippe Sollers, Marriage as a Fine Art (2016).

Reviews

[Yasemin Bozbey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Melanie Klein'ın kendi kitaplarını okumadan Kristeva'nın -belki de fazla idealize edilmiş- Melanie'sini okumakla hata ettiğimi düşünüyorum. Kitabı okuma hızımla anlama hızım bu sebeple eş zamanlı ilerleyemedi. Kristeva'nın referans verdiği makalelerin isimlerinin çevirmen tarafından Türkçeleştirilmemiş olması da bu algılama yavaşlığını destekledi ne yazık ki. Kitabı okuma sürecim boyunca Kristeva'nın aydınlatıcı olmadığını feminist ifadeyi kaybetmemek adına Klein'ı ve öğretisini idealize etmekten kaçınmayarak anlatımını sürdürdüğünü de düşünmeden edemedim. Tüm bunlara rağmen söylenmeli ki: Melanie Klein'ın dünyasına Julia Kristeva ve Goodreads'te bulamadığım Pinhan Yayıncılık ile (Melanie Klein - Delilik yahut Acı ve Yaratıcılık Olarak Ana Katli) girmiş bulundum.

[Raúl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una introducción sistemática y detallista, de forma que exposición y análisis se aúnan, para exponer el sistema de Melanie Klein a través de buscar los fundamentos teóricos de su pensamiento analítico y filosófico en la discusión de los casos por ella expuestos. Un trabajo de Julia Kristeva brillante, sistemático, a que se le puede poner como objeción la falta de referencias y bibliografía de los trabajos citados y citas presentadas.

[Frank Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

worth the read; has a discussion of the politics of child psychoanalysis during WWII; gets me an inch closer to knowing what the Kleinians and French analysts are trying to say (.75 miles to go)

[Joseph M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was some parts (or part-objects) of this that I found weird. Such as all of it.
Probably my biggest problem with it, however, was Klein's view on women, so my problem was really with Freud in that regard, who started the whole discourse. I started to roll my eyes when it began to talk about frigidity. A term that has now become grossly (mis-)used. I'm not specifically blaming the authors for that, though.
But Melanie Klein's theories that interest me most are the idea of matricide, art as reparation, internal objects, pre-verbal fantasy and especially the play technique. There are symbolic objects in us early on. These are like internalized representations of the breast or the penis usually. The child feels these objects to be threatening sometimes and therefore tries to destroy them. I'm not sure I understood, but at first it seems like the parents are fused into one, and not even separated.
Yes, it seems like Klein is saying the most primal objects are mommy-daddy. So she interprets the childs play mostly in these terms. Unsurprisingly, a big target of Deleuze and Guattari in 'Anti-Oedipus' An "oedipal container" as she herself (or Kristeva, I have to check back) says. So something to contain the fantasy that would otherwise go haywire?
These structures we have early on influence our sexuality in big ways later. How we respond to these perceived 'bad' internal objects. We will try to "split" or "project" these objects. Sometimes doing everything to sadistically destroy them (because we perceive them as after us). This isn't to say that sometimes aren't really after us sometimes (people who want to hurt us). But it would explain some behaviors. A small example is using insults or something like that. Or a big example might be racism. In an attempt to skirt around the bad internal objects, one tries to disavow them completely. A lack is there, why? It's because of this object. I also have a fantasy of omnipotence, I'm completely in my own world. But this paranoid-schizoid position soon gives way to something more somber (but better and more enjoyable in it's own way), something called 'reality'.
The thing is we get to this when we (this is the part where I'm not really sure what I'm talking about) are able to have thoughts, are able to leave our 'mother-tongue' (like Klein left hers, as Kristeva notes), behind. We can't just bathe in our own language anymore, and there needs to be some kind of reciprocation and interaction between others and us. Symbolization requires that we 'form thoughts', that we are able to view other people as separate. That we view people as separate 'molds'. Out of what material? Klein (or maybe Kristeva) would probably say, moms body. But that fusion we used to have with the mother haunts us in a way. Once we realized that we have (symbolically) killed the mother, we have this gaping traumatic hole. We realize we are not omnipotent and among this field of speech, all these scary broken partial objects.
This is the 'depressive position' and it follows the 'paranoid-schizoid' position that I partially laid out earlier (the feeling or fantasy of being attacked by internal objects). But then one realizes what one has done and ignored the effects of, and then the guilt kicks in. To respond to this, people sometimes make 'reparation' kind of like sublimation in a way it seems. A creative reassembling.

[Michael Kulyk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Making Klein comprehensible given her subject matter is about the deepest part of the unconscious mind isn't easy so hats off to the likes of Hanna Segal and Thomas Ogden who have managed to do so. Unfortunately I found Kristeva's Melanie Klein as being pretty much incomprehensible, partly because of her flowery vague sentences and partly from her confusing use of Lacanian categories for her analytical lens on Klein. And even here she uses Lacanian terms in a way that's difficult to understand. According to Kristeva the Kleinian infant has from the beginning a predetermined 'Other', not an other but an 'Other', even though Lacan's central criticism of Klein and object relations theory is that they are too invested in the imaginary register and do not pay attention to the 'Other' of the symbolic register. All I got from reading the first 4 chapters was a growing sense of confusion and distrust in the author's competence to write a book like this.

[Dri · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just have a hard time digesting Freud and his followers.

[Sherah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this is ostensibly a biography of Klein, Kristeva constructs as more of a biography of her work which makes it a useful introduction to Klein. It's also interesting to see Kristeva weave some of her own ideas such as 'new maladies of the soul' into her reading of Klein.