Melanie Klein was an Austrian-British psychoanalyst known for her contributions to object relations theory. She focused on early childhood development and the role of the unconscious in shaping personality. Klein’s work emphasized the importance of internal objects (such as representations of caregivers) and their impact on an individual’s psyche. She developed techniques such as play therapy to explore the inner world of children. Klein’s theories diverged from those of Sigmund Freud, particularly in her emphasis on the infant’s innate aggression and the significance of early experiences in shaping personality. Her ideas have had a profound influence on psychoanalytic thought, particularly in the fields of child psychology and psychotherapy. Despite controversies and criticisms, Klein’s work remains influential and continues to be studied and applied in clinical practice.

Melanie Klein Quotes

01. “Although psychology and pedagogy have always maintained the belief that a child is a happy being without any conflicts, and have assumed that the sufferings of adults are the results of the burdens and hardships of reality, it must be asserted that just the opposite is true. What we learn about the child and the adult through psychoanalysis shows that all the sufferings of later life are for the most part repetitions of these earlier ones, and that every child in the first years of life goes through and immeasurable degree of suffering.”
― Melanie Klein

02. “The repeated attempts that have been made to improve humanity – in particular to make it more peacable – have failed, because nobody has understood the full depth and vigour of the instincts of aggression innate in each individual. Such efforts do not seek to do more than encourage the positive, well-wishing impulses of the person while denying or suppressing his aggressive ones. And so they have been doomed to failure from the beginning. But psychoanalysis has different means at its disposal for a task of this kind. It cannot, it is true, altogether do away with man’s aggressive instinct as such; but it can, by diminishing the anxiety which accentuates those instincts, break up the mutual reinforcement that is going on all the time between his hatred and his fear. When, in our analytic work, we are always seeing how the resolution of early infantile anxiety not only lessens and modifies the child’s aggressive impulses, but leads to a more valuable employment and gratification of them from a social point of view; how the child shows an ever-grwing, deeply rooted desire to be loved and to love, and to be at peace with the world about it; and how much pleasure and benefit, and what a lessening of anxiety it derives from the fulfilment of this desire – when we see all this, we are ready to believe that what now would seem a Utopian state of things may well come true in those distant days when, as I hope, child-analysis will become as much a part of every person’s upbringing as school-education is now. Then, perhaps, that hostile attitude, springing from fear and suspicion, which is latent more or less strongly in each human being, and which intensifies a hundredfold in him every impulse of destruction, will give way to kindlier and more trustful feelings towards his fellowmen, and people may inhabit the world together in greater peace and goodwill than they do now.”
― Melanie Klein

03. “إذا كان للمرأة اتجاه أمومي إزاء الرجل، فإنها تشبع (بقدر ما هو ممكن) إمنيات الرجل الكثر قدماً، أمنياته الخاصة التي كان يرغب فيها من أمه ص 74”
― Melanie Klein

04. “إذا أصبحنا في أعماق شعورنا قادرين على أن نمحو إلى حدّ معّين تلك المطاعن التي نستشعرها إزاء آبائنا، فإن بوسعنا عندئذ أن نكون في سلام مع أنفسنا وأن نحب الآخرين بالمعنى الحقيقي لكلمة حب ص 121”
― Melanie Klein

05. “Love is not just admiration for strength, it is also tolerance for weakness.”
― Melanie Klein

06. “Quem come do fruto do conhecimento é sempre expulso de algum paraíso.”
― Melanie Klein

07. “هذه القدرة على التوحّد بشخص آخر عنصر من العناصر الأكثر أهمية في العلاقات الإنسانية بصورة عامة. وهي أيضاً شرط لنحب حباً حقيقياً وقوياً ص 71”
― Melanie Klein