Happy Birthday Melanie Klein!

Melanie Klein was an Austrian who was well known for play therapy. She was born on March 30, 1882 and died on September 22, 1960. As a professional, her first route was going to be medical school. When she married Arthur Klein, she and her family had to travel frequently due to her husband’s job. While she was in Budapest, she started to work with psychoanalyst, Sandor Ferenczi. She later met Sigmund Freud while attending the 1918 International Psycho-Analytic Congress. He was the one who inspired her to do her first psychoanalytic paper, which was, “The Development of a Child.” After her divorce in 1922, she moved to Berlin to work with Karl Abraham, another psychoanalyst.
Throughout life, Klein struggled with depression. She had lost two siblings early in life and in 1933, her eldest son died. This caused her to write several psychoanalytic papers on depression’s connection with unresolved childhood issues. The impact Melanie Klein had on developmental psychology was noteworthy. It focused on the growth of humans throughout their life span. There is a lot of change that occurs during childhood, but changes also occur during early adulthood, as well as middle age and throughout senior years. Klein was the initiator of play therapy and to this day, it is widely used in many different styles. It was through play therapy that she realized children would communicate what was not easily said verbally. Her ideas became extremely admired that they became well known throughout the world.