[The difficult concept of "internal objects" (1934-1943). Its significance for the formation of the Klein group]

Although the concept of "inner objects" developed by Melanie Klein is hardly a major object of discussion today, it caused a furore in the ranks of the British Psychoanalytical Society in the thirties and forties. Notably the analysts from Vienna were unable to agree to the existence of inner objects engendered via processes of internalisation. The author traces the course of these discussions of a clinical problem and the confusion they caused, placing them at the same time in a specific historical context. He sees the controversy as the expression of conflicts and fears unsettling the British Psychoanalytical Society during that period, caused on the one hand by the necessary integration of the exiled Freud family and on the other by tensions within its own ranks leading ultimately to a division of the Society and the constitution of the Klein Group.