Response to `Teaching Klein' by Linda Buckingham

Juliet Miller

I was very interested to read Linda Buckingham's paper `Teaching Klein' (Buckingham1994), as I recently completed a course in Psychodynamic Counselling at a traininginstitution in London where a majority of the theoretical input was Kleinian. Buckingham'sdiscussion of the problems raised on a Kleinian training appear familiar to me, and thisresponse is not to disagree with any points she raised but rather to add something from thestudent's perspective.

Within a reasonably eclectic training, dispute about Klein and her theories was fre-quently an area of discussion between students, generating high levels of anxiety, angerand splits within groups. I eventually felt that these discussions reflected a far more funda-mental disagreement about how we all wanted to think and work in the consultingroomrather than simply about the merits of, or difficulties with, Kleinian theory.

Buckingham suggests that Kleinian theories seem particularly difficult initially forstudents to swallow, and I would agree with her that this is true for some students.However, in my experience, it appeared that as we became more familiar with Klein'stheories there were two distinct reactions to whether or not they were considered to be ahelpful tool in the clinical work.

Positive responses and a growing ability to play with and use her ideas came fromthose students who felt the need for reliable answers that they could use to inform them inthe consulting-room. For these students the extensive body of Klein's work which deals socomprehensively with the internal world of the child became a map which they felt helpedthem to see their way through the confusing world of the consulting-room. So for somestudents Klein's strong faith in her own theories was a relief.

Negative and antagonistic reactions to Klein's theories seemed to come from thosestudents who themselves felt uncomfortable with the possibility that there was one answeror one map, and who therefore felt claustrophobic and restricted within the apparentsurefootedness of Kleinian theory rather than supported by it. These students seemed to belooking for ideas and theories which opened up the possibility of many ways ofunderstanding where symbolism played more of a part. For them having one answer wasnot a relief but appeared to be a constraint.

While thinking about the conflicts and anxieties that were raised by thesedisagreements I read again John Hill's paper `Am I a Kleinian? Is anyone?' (Hill 1993). Hedistinguishes between the different ways Kleinian theory can be interpreted and then usedin the consulting-room.

On the one hand an analytic theory may be taken as an assertion about an actual event orexperience that actually happened at, for example, the breast. On the other hand, it can be taken asa way of cohering the data that emerges from the patient, so that in relation to what

Juliet Miller is a psychodynamic counsellor in private practice, and a member of the Institute ofPsychotherapy and Counselling. Address for correspondence: 60 Grove Park Terrace, Chiswick,London W4 3QE.

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the patient may be saying or experiencing it is as though such and such happened at the breast whichwould make sense of empirical phenomena in the present.

Hill's suggestion that Kleinian theory can be used either as a concrete working theory ofwhat actually happened or as a symbolic expression of a patient's realities made me thinkagain about the tremendous struggle students have in integrating theory into a workableform for their own use. If first impressions and feelings about Kleinian theory are that itmaps out the internal and external world as a dynamic functioning system of objectrelations, it inevitably appears to close down on a world of symbolism and the unknown.

There is, of course, a body of work since Klein which has attempted to bring these twoareas closer together. Post Jungians have written extensively on the similarities betweenarchetypes and unconscious phantasies, suggesting that Kleinian ideas can be used on asymbolic level in a similar way to Jungian theory as a tool rather than as a map (Samuels1985).

However being taught Klein can be a visceral and bodily experience with a powerfulaffective response, and understanding how to adapt these ideas in the consulting-room inanything other than a rather concretized way can feel beyond a student's capacities in theearly stages of training.

Maybe the use of Kleinian theory can eventually offer the therapist a broader spectrumof ways of thinking about clients than is originally suggested by studying her work.Experienced therapists of different persuasions are obviously able to use her work invarying ways. But, for the student, she initially appears to offer one way only.

Being handed a map of the baby's internal world for those trainees who are anxiousabout not understanding can bring immense relief. And, as Buckingham suggests, this mapis especially welcome when starting work with very disturbed clients. But, in myexperience, the sureness of the map can be a problem for other students who feelconstrained by exactly this certainty and are unable as yet to use Klein's ideas in a moresymbolic or fluid form.

References

Buckingham, L. (1994) Teaching Klein. In British Journal of Psychotherapy 11(2): 298-302.

Hill, J. (1993) Am I a Kleinian? Is anyone? In British Journal of Psychotherapy 9(4): 463-75.

Samuels, A. (1985) Jung and the Post Jungians. London: Routledge.