having words1

My thanks to Josie Dolan for her interest and encouragement, which came at a crucial stage in the writing. For the period of leave during which the article was written, I thank the Research Committee of the Faculty of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences at the University of the West of England, and the Arts and Humanities Research Board Research Leave Scheme.

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Suzy Gordon School of Cultural Studies University of the West of England St Matthias Campus Oldbury Court Road Bristol BS16 2JP UK E‐mail: s‐[email protected]

My thanks to Josie Dolan for her interest and encouragement, which came at a crucial stage in the writing. For the period of leave during which the article was written, I thank the Research Committee of the Faculty of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences at the University of the West of England, and the Arts and Humanities Research Board Research Leave Scheme.

The Freuds had escaped Nazi Germany and arrived in London in 1938. Sigmund died from cancer the following year, leaving his daughter Anna to establish herself in the British Society just as it was beginning to submit Klein's theories to new scrutiny. The war and then the blitz kept many members away from meetings and, with Ernest Jones's semi‐retirement, Edward Glover was established as “acting president” of the British Society, “leading discussions … all of which were intended to undermine Klein's work” (Grosskurth 283, 284). By 1942, the British Society was in fear of division and collapse, in the midst of its own “war,” with Klein “fighting for her life, exhorting and deploying her troops” (285).

Marjorie Brierly, “Sixth Discussion of Scientific Controversies” in The Freud–Klein Controversies 1941–45, eds. Pearl King and Riccardo Steiner (London: Tavistock/Routledge, 1991) 537; hereafter abbreviated FK.

Joseph Schwartz explains that Klein's ideas not only “found a resonance” in Britain but also “catalysed the emergence of a distinctly British School of Psychoanalysis” (Schwartz 214).

It is worth noting that Heimann's response to Brierly is in fact a double bluff: “these three words ‘so to speak’ … do not occur in Freud's original writing,” and “I do not know,” she adds, “[h]ow the[se] words … came into the English translation” (FK 581). Having been accused of paying inadequate attention to Freud's exact words, Heimann quotes them back at Brierly, giving the full passage in the original German in which the three words in question do not appear. Thus presenting herself (and Klein) as the more faithful reader of Freud, attentive to the very letter of his text, Heimann accuses Brierly of disregarding “the fact shown by Freud that … [intellectual activities] … are derived from … [instinctual impulses]” (581).

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suzy gordon

Suzy Gordon School of Cultural Studies University of the West of England St Matthias Campus Oldbury Court Road Bristol BS16 2JP UK E‐mail: s‐[email protected]