… a brief note about it:

Oh, how I hated this lady, when I first encountered her in my first year – well sort of second year of psychotherapy studying. The first bit was Foundation year, then the first year.. and Object Relations – i.e. Melanie Klein.

Klein tells us it is all about how we object related to our mother’s breast and not anything to do with mothers’ and others’ behaviour towards us as a baby, tot, child… What, I thought then – what are you saying to us… ?!

I also went to see the play, about her, at the Adelphi theatre in London only to learn that both her children ended up tragically, as grown ups, a daughter and a son, who both married an older spouse, implying an unresolved attachment to their mother. Her daughter ended up in a mental institution, and her son died in an accident, semi-implied it might have been deliberate…!?

On learning of her son’s death, Klein felt unable to dream – she found dreams useful to help her make sense of her life and the energies she needed to make sense of, for herself. Healing. Her dreams disappeared and she set off to travel for his funeral. While waiting for the delayed train Klein fell asleep and dreamt. Dreamt – she felt this was a sign – and glad of having the dream she decided not to travel to her son’s funeral, after all. 

Oh dear – what a lovely mother… How would one not hate this lady? In those days I wasn’t able to see the tree for the woods., and to me a bad mother was someone not to be liked. Full stop.  

However clients loved her and claimed to have benefited tremendously by working with her. 

Gradually, I found her theory, represented in Envy and Gratitude invaluable to my own healing. Something clicked for me – this was in 2010/2011 – a long time ago, but I remember this as so significant in my own progress on my path. 

From bad feelings (i.e. envy) to gratitude (i.e. good feelings) … how about that …?! Of course I still feel uneasy when I think of her children, but I realised that there is more to life than we humans are able to understand… 

Klein taught me something remarkable, at that time – she taught me that it is not about other people but about us – more specifically, that it is about our reaction to other people’s behaviour that is to be worked on. Changing our perspective towards working to understand what we are experiencing – is where we can best heal and develop ourselves. With this I managed to shift my focus from them to myself…

For how could we ever heal ourselves if our attention remains glued to those who injured us – instead of staying with ourselves, first and foremost…? 

We could not heal without our attention being pulled away from the perpetrators of our childhood issues towards ourselves – our feelings-thoughts-sensations about it. This is where our healing is. 

With gratitude#

recently posted on medium as well