Melanie Klein and D.W. Winnicott were both psychotherapists who belonged to the British Psychoanalytic Society. Klein and Winnicott had practices working with disturbed children. They both studied and accepted the work of Freud, although they both expanded and altered his theories on child development. Despite these facts in common, Melanie Klein and D.W. Winnicott had very different theories. Melanie Klein was a firm believer in the child's innate ability to fantasize on a complex level and did not give much credence to the role of the mother during early infancy. She gave credit to the innate instincts in determining a child's development. D.W. Winnicott, on the other hand, believed that the mother has an important impact on the baby's development from birth. He believed that the environment the child inhabited was the key to a child's development. The differences in their theories of a mother's role in an infant's developing self-identity may stem from differences in their own childhoods.
Melanie Klein was born in Austria in 1882 as Melanie Raize. Her father was a physician. She was the product of a second marriage (Grosskurth, 1987, p. 6). Her father's first marriage was arranged in Orthodox Jewish tradition and failed. He remarried; after he had three children, the family moved to Vienna. This did not improve his finances, and he began a dental practice while his wife ran a plant and reptile shop. Melanie Klein began life in poverty with two working parents and a wet nurse. She resented her parents for not giving her enough attention. At one point, her mother told her that she had been an unwanted child (Grosskurth, 1987, p. 15).
Melanie Klein did not have much contact with her father as a child. He was in his 50s when she was born, and he was emotionally distant from her (Kavaler-Adler, 1993, p. 188). Melanie craved his attention and approval. Melanie Klein's mother was able to manipulate her daughter...