From the Melanie Klein archive: Klein’s further thoughts on loneliness^*

* The digitized Melanie Klein archive can be accessed via the Wellcome Library. https://wellcomelibrary.org

ABSTRACT

The author brings to light previously unpublished material from the part of the Melanie Klein archive that deals with the subject of Klein’s last, posthumously published paper “On the sense of loneliness”. Here are found four differing versions of the loneliness paper, written between 1958 and 1960, and prepared for spoken presentations to different audiences. The author gives evidence from Klein’s copious additional notes that she intended to write a whole book or monograph dealing with the topic of loneliness from a psychoanalytic point of view. At the time of Klein’s death, as well as elaborating her own thinking on the topic of loneliness, she was gathering and incorporating the comments of a number of close colleagues on her work. Previously unpublished letters to Klein from Wilfred Bion and Elliott Jaques are included in this paper, as are extracts from Klein’s own notes, organized under a number of headings. Without attempting to analyse the material in any depth, the author suggests that some of the themes Klein was working on may have had particular relevance for her personally in what turned out to be the very last months of her life.

KEYWORDS:

• Melanie Klein
• archive
• loneliness

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to the Estate of WR Bion for allowing me to publish two letters written to Klein by Wilfred Bion and to the Elliott Jaques Trust for allowing me to publish the letter to Klein from Elliott Jaques. Thanks are due also to the Wellcome Library and the Melanie Klein Trust which owns the copyright to the Melanie Klein archive and has given permission for publication of this material. http://www.melanie-klein-trust.org.uk/

Notes

* The digitized Melanie Klein archive can be accessed via the Wellcome Library. https://wellcomelibrary.org

1 These references to “page 4 second paragraph” and “at later the bottom of page 5” do not correspond to any of the four versions of the paper in the archive, so it is not clear to which version Bion was referring.