Quick Facts
Biography
Melitta Schmideberg (1904-1983) was a psychoanalyst and author who was the only daughter of Melanie Klein.
Biography
Born in Slovakia in 1904, Melitta grew up in Budapest, and trained as a psychoanalyst at the Berlin Institute. There she met Walter Schmideberg, another psychoanalyst, whom she married in 1924.
In 1932, along with her mother, she moved to London and joined the British Psychoanalytical Society as associate member. Entering further analysis with Edward Glover, she became a partisan with him in their vocal dispute with her own mother Melanie Klein; and later resigned from the Society in 1944 to concentrate on her work with juvenile delinquency. She is sometimes seen as an extreme example of the bitterness that can be instilled by having an analytic parent.
She died in 1983.
Publications
Early articles
In the thirties Schmideberg published a series of articles in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, on subjects ranging from the asocial child to intellectual inhibitions.
Blitz studies
During The Blitz, Schmideberg published a set of observations on reactions to the air-raids in London, noting increases in localism, in drinking and (especially in women) sexual desire.
Books
- Children in Need. Allen and Unwin. 1948.
- Short Analytic Therapy. Child Care Pub. 1950.
- Principles of Treating Borderline Cases. 1955.
- Multiple Origins and Functions of Guilt. 1956.
- My Experience of Psychotherapy. American Psychology Association. 1974.
- Probation and allied services: criminology in action - Volume 1. International Journal of Offender Therapy. 1971. with Gerhard O. W. Mueller, Irving Barnett.
- Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946) p. 652
- J. Gardiner, The Blitz (2011) p. 182-4