Roger Money-Kyrle papers

Archives and Manuscripts is extremely pleased to announce that the papers of the eminent Kleinian psychoanalyst, Roger Money-Kyrle are now catalogued and available for research, subject to certain Data Protection restrictions on parts of the collection.

Money-Kyrle (1898-1980) had an extremely distinguished analytic pedigree, having been analysed by Ernest Jones and Freud, and later on by Melanie Klein. His initial interest in psychoanalysis was spurred by a belief in what it could contribute to understanding of wider questions of politics, economics, and society in general. He acquired two PhDs – one, working in Vienna, while also undertaking analysis with Freud, with Professor Morris Schlick, on ‘Contribution to the Theory of Reality’, and one at University College London working with Professor J C Flugel, on ‘The Meaning of Sacrifice’. The collection includes two boxes of papers relating to this early, largely philosophically and anthropologically-orientated, work. Although Money-Kyrle was elected an associate of the British Psycho-Analytical Association in 1928 this was on condition that he did not practise.

During the 1930s he published a number of books and articles developing his ideas relating psychoanalysis to wider social issues. In 1936 he was persuaded by John Rickman to undertake a training analysis with Melanie Klein, and in 1945 he became a full member of the British Psycho-Analytical Association, started seeing analysands, and subsequently also qualified as a training analyst.

During the War he was employed at the Air Ministry (he had served in the Royal Flying Corps in World War I). After the War he joined Henry Dicks in Germany, working with the German Personnel Research Branch, which was concerned with identifying individuals who could be trusted to build up the new Germany following the fall of the Third Reich. There is a small amount of material in the collection relating to this period.

The bulk of the collection, however, consists of case histories, and Money-Kyrle’s development of his ideas in his writings. There are many notes and drafts and early versions of material that was later published in various forms. There is a little personalia, some correspondence with colleagues, and a few files relating to professional organisations with which he was involved, including the Melanie Klein Trust. The collection also includes correspondence and drafts relating to his role in editing the special issue of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis to mark Melanie Klein’s 70th Birthday, and the volume New Directions in Psychoanalysis (1955), an important statement of the thinking of the Kleinian school.

The survival of Money-Kyrle’s papers appears to have been somewhat haphazard, and there are a number of lacunae in the materials here. However this is an important collection of papers of a key figure in the promotion and development of Klein’s ideas and also shows his interactions with a number of other colleagues. It adds to our existing strong holdings in this area.

Wellcome Library loans swastikas and squiggles to the Science Museum

Submarines, tanks, swastikas and squiggles are probably not the first things that come to mind when envisaging the material held in the Wellcome Library, but that’s exactly what is contained within the Melanie Klein and Donald Winncott archives that are deposited here. Now, a number of these items have gone on loan to the Science Museum’s new exhibition, ‘Psychoanalysis: The Unconscious in Everyday Life’.

Melanie Klein was an Austrian-born British psychoanalyst who had a significant impact on child psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis. The material on loan to the Science Museum consists of a series of drawings by 'Richard', a boy of eight who had many sessions with Klein and is one of her most famous case studies.

Dating from the early years of World War II, the drawings depict Nazi submarines surrounded by schools of large yellow fish, tanks, numerous explosions, and dogfights between British and German planes.

Even for the untrained eye, it is easy to deduce that this young boy was deeply affected by the events occurring on the world stage at that time. Indeed, on reading more on the subject, one is told that 'Richard's psychopathology centred on the Oedipus complex and projected the figure of Adolf Hitler onto his father'.

The naivety of the drawings - some in grey pencil, others more vividly coloured in - coupled with their small size (similar to a postcard) and the flimsy paper they are drawn on contributes to the feelings of poignancy and fragility surrounding them.

Donald Winnicott was another British psychoanalyst who worked extensively with troubled young people. He believed in using the idea of play during his consultations with patients; his 'Squiggle drawings' are an example of this. He would draw a shape and ask the child to add to it and make something out of it. Two of these 'squiggles', along with two other drawings by Winnicott called 'Stella' and 'Tak', have also been lent to the exhibition.

‘Psychoanalysis: The Unconscious in Everyday Life’ runs from 13 October 2010 to 2 April 2011 at the Science Museum, London.

Author: Rowan de Saulles

Mrs Klein

The play Mrs Klein by Nicholas Wright is currently enjoying a well-reviewed revival at the Almeida Theatre, London.

The play had its first production at the National Theatre in 1988. Two years previously Phyllis Grosskurth’s somewhat controversial biography of Klein had appeared, based on extensive research in the Klein papers while these were still in the care of Hanna Segal of the Melanie Klein Trust.

The Melanie Klein Trust gave the Klein papers to what was then the Contemporary Medical Archives Centre at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in 1984. These were catalogued (the catalogue is now available online), and in 1987 Nicholas Wright did research on them for his play. They were also consulted by designers for both the original and the current productions. Since the receipt of the first and largest batch of her papers a number of additions have been added, including family letters and other papers from her grandchildren.

The Klein papers reflect her life and her career as an influential psychoanalyst. They include notes on the cases she saw, both from her early years of practice in Germany and the later part of her career in England – it is interesting to see how quickly she made the shift from keeping notes in German to keeping them in English. The collection also holds manuscripts of her books and articles, drafts of articles, and unpublished lectures, notes on analytical technique and theory, appointment diaries, a brief autobiographical memoir, press cuttings, and numerous photographs of Klein, her family, and colleagues, also of the small toys that she used for child analysis (as well as numerous original drawings by child patients).

There is a significant group of files concerning the Controversial Discussions within the British Psycho-Analytical Society, in which Klein and her daughter Melitta Schmideberg, also a psychoanalyst, were ranged on opposite sides: the play centres on the tensions between mother and daughter at an earlier phase of their lives. Apart from this episode, however, there is surprisingly little surviving correspondence between Klein and her professional associates.

Besides her own papers, there is material relating to Klein in Archives and Manuscripts among the papers of John Bowlby and Donald Winnicott, both of whom were analysed by her, the papers of S. H. Foulkes, and those of Michael Fordham. Her published works may be found on the Library shelves.

Melanie Klein Play on Radio 4

This Saturday (20th December) Radio 4 will be broadcasting a play based on the life of the influential child psychoanalyst Melanie Klein (1882-1960).

Mrs Klein by Nicholas Wright dramatises Klein's relationship with her own children.

Melanie Klein, a disciple of the teachings of Sigmund Freud, came to London in 1926 and was a key figure in the 'British School' of psychoanalysis. The therapeutic techniques she devised for children also had a lasting impact on methods of child care and rearing.

The Wellcome Library holds Klein's papers – a rich collection of material and part of our significant archival holdings on psychiatry and psychoanalysis.