Klein, Melanie

Material includes correspondence, diaries, drafts of letters and publications, case material, photographs, files on the controversies within the British Psychoanalytical Society, 1939-1944; family correspondence and literary fragments (in German).

The collection is not considered to be complete; Melanie Klein retained very little of what must surely have been a great deal of correspondence generated during the course of her life. Extensive case material kept by her survives, but there are obvious gaps. Similarly although manuscripts and draft versions of much of her work survive, these are not exhaustive.

‘Richard”s drawings reproduced in Narrative of a Child Analysis were received from the Melanie Klein Trust in May 2005 and have been incorporated into PP/KLE/B.47.

Some of the material (PP/KLE/A.1-7) is not only in German but written in ‘Deutschschrift’, which is difficult to decipher, and some of the early correspondence of Moritz and Libussa (Deutsch) Reizes includes extensive passages in Yiddish. The detailed listing of this material was undertaken by Jens Lazarus from the Karl Sudhoff Institut, Leipzig. It now forms Section F.

Titles in this list in inverted commas are those which were on the actual covers of the files as they were found: file titles not in inverted commas have been assigned by the archivist. Square brackets indicate that the matter within them can be reasonably deduced, and are used for cross-references.