Melanie Klein, Spontaneity, and Goats

Oh, hello dear subscriber on Substack! For some reason lots of you chose to subscribe in the last few days. (1) Please tell me where you come from, I’m curious. (2) I thought this is a good nudge to revive posting here. So here is a first little update of what I’ve been been busy with in the last few months:

Melanie Klein

Reading Klein goes something like “oh… wait WHAT??… hm… WHAT THE?…aha“.

And it can be so hard to get to the ahas, that many stay away from Klein entirely. Which is such a shame because despite being terribly weird (so weird!) at times, some of her ideas have had a massive impact on how I understand and practice psychodynamically.

So, my next workshop will be all about our favourite witch: Melanie Klein.

I’m done re-reading her collected works “Love, Guilt, and Reparation” and “Envy and Gratitude”. I’m now working on putting her most helpful ideas in a format that’s digestible and expect to be ready by August. So hopefully no one needs to be confused by her paranoid-schizoid and depressive position ever again 😎

If you have a specific concept or paper from Klein you struggle with, reply to let me know and I’ll do my best to include it!

Spontaneity

Psychoanalysis itself is already challenging. Adding philosophy to that? You better have your favourite AI chat open to make sense of it. But if Salman Akhtar recommends a book, you read it. So here we are!

The book I’m talking about is “Spontaneity: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry” by Gemma Corradi Fiumara (Amazon affiliate link). It’s about the role spontaneity, agency, and creativity play in developing a self.

I’ve been very interested in internalization, so the first chapter was already a banger. I did find the first ~10 pages very frustrating though, it takes some time to get used to the language and thought process of the author. Once I’m all the way through, I’ll share a full review.

Edith the Goat

Lastly, a personal update about the personal highlight of Spring 2026.

I’ve been hard at work to add more joy into my life. When an opportunity at a farm showed up to sponsor a baby goat, I dropped everything and those furry, joyful, totally unhinged (look at those eyes!) rascals jumped right into my lap and straight into my heart.

This is my little Edith in the first picture below. I got to name her after her great-grandmother-in-spirit, the psychoanalyst Edith Jacobson. I thought, maybe you also need to look at some cute baby goats, hence the pictures :)

Being surrounded by so much aliveness, with baby goats climbing, chewing, headbutting, and knibbling all over you, has been such a joy.

Goats, goats, goats 🐐

Best wishes,

Alina

PS: Next year, the new generation of baby goats being born on the farm will be allowed to be named starting with “F” - and obviously this world needs a baby goat called “Freud”. So I'll be back.