Melitta Rene Schmideberg-Klein (''née'' Klein; 17 January 1904 – 10 February 1983) was a Slovakian-born British-American physician, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst.

Biography

Schmideberg was born in

Ružomberok Ružomberok (; german: Rosenberg; hu, Rózsahegy; pl, Rużomberk) is a town in northern Slovakia, in the historical Liptov region. It has a population of around 27,000 inhabitants (45,000 with nearby villages). Etymology The name of the initia ...

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...

(now

Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...

) into a Jewish family, the only daughter and eldest child of Arthur Klein and psychoanalyst

Melanie Klein Melanie Klein (née Reizes; 30 March 1882 – 22 September 1960) was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Klein suggested t ...

(''née'' Reizes). Prior to the First World War, the family moved to

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

. Following the war, her father moved to Sweden and Melitta and her mother returned to Ružomberok, where Melitta graduated from high school in 1921. She moved to Berlin to train at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, where she met Austrian psychoanalyst Walter Schmideberg, a friend of Freud, whom she married in 1924.M. Shapira, ''The War Inside'' (2013) p. 148 In 1927, Schmideberg earned her M.D. from Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin. That same year, her mother moved to London. Five years later, in response to rising anti-Semitism in Germany, Melitta and her husband joined her in London, where she became a British citizen. She moved to New York City in 1945 and helped found the Association for the Psychiatric Treatment of Offenders in New York. She became a U.S. citizen in 1959, when she was living at 444

Central Park West Eighth Avenue is a major north–south avenue on the west side of Manhattan in New York City, carrying northbound traffic below 59th Street. It is one of the original avenues of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 to run the length of Manhattan, ...

. After her mother's death in 1960, she returned to London, where she died in 1983.

Career

In London, she joined the

British Psychoanalytical Society The British Psychoanalytical Society was founded by the British neurologist Ernest Jones as the London Psychoanalytical Society on 30 October 1913. It is one of two organizations in Britain training psychoanalysts, the other being the British ...

as associate member. Entering further analysis with Edward Glover, she became a partisan with him in their vocal dispute with her own mother; 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 was the founding editor of the '' International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology''.

Publications

Early articles

In the 1930s, Schmideberg published a series of articles in the ''

International Journal of Psychoanalysis ''The International Journal of Psychoanalysis'' is an academic journal in the field of psychoanalysis. The idea of the journal was proposed by Ernest Jones in a letter to Sigmund Freud dated 7 December 1918. The journal itself was established in ...

'', on subjects ranging from the asocial child to intellectual inhibitions.

Blitz studies

During

The Blitz The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Germa ...

, 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.J. Gardiner, ''The Blitz'' (2011) p. 182-4

Books

* * * * * * with Gerhard O. W. Mueller, Irving Barnett.

References

External links

Melitta Schmideberg
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schmideberg, Melitta 1904 births 1983 deaths British Jews People from Ružomberok British psychoanalysts American psychoanalysts 20th-century British medical doctors American physicians Hungarian emigrants to England Slovak emigrants to the United Kingdom Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom People with acquired American citizenship British emigrants to the United States Hungarian emigrants to the United States Slovak emigrants to the United States Hungarian Jews Slovak Jews Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom