From Fear to Creativity: Melanie Klein’s Interpretation of Literary Fiction as Conceptual Investigations

The criticism of Melanie Klein's use of literary works falls into three categories: analyzing the author, the reader, or the literary characters. This chapter will introduce a fourth methodology, inspired by Wittgenstein's main methodology of conceptual investigation. Focusing on Klein's three main articles considering literary fictions, the discussion will illuminate the ways in which Melanie Klein interpreted literary works to re-define central psychoanalytic concepts as “identification,” “split,” and “integration.” This interdisciplinary analysis not only suggests a new method of psychoanalytic literary criticism, but also a new way of self-analysis inspired by Klein and Wittgenstein.