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With its forced dissemination after the Anschluss of Austria with Germany in 1938, psychoanalysis shifted its center of gravity not only from Vienna to London, creating “a new kind of diaspora,” but also from a patriarchal and phallocentric focus towards a mother-child centered theory and practice. After Freud’s death, psychoanalysis, notably in Britain, was led by two women psychoanalysts, Melanie Klein and Anna Freud, each with a very different view on the nature of childhood, sexuality and aggression, intellectual development, the development of responsibility, motherhood, pathology, and the life of the mind as such. This course will introduce the important intellectual psychoanalytic concepts and theories, which were developed not only through the clinical work of these two exceptional women with children, but also through what came to be known in the history of psychoanalysis as “The Controversial Discussions”: a set of intense debates between two thought collectives organized around these female pioneers. Readings will include: Sigmund Freud, Klein, Anna Freud, Winnicott, Heimann, Jones, and Isaccs. Cross-listed with History, Psychology, WGS.