Post by yaldasharif on Sept 12, 2017 19:19:50 GMT
Melanie Klein extended and developed Sigmund Freud’s understanding of the unconscious mind. By analysing children’s play, much as Freud had analysed dreams, she explored the uncharted territory of the mind of the infant, finding an early Oedipus complex and the earliest roots of the superego.
Klein's understanding of the child’s deepest fears, and its defences against them, enabled her to make original theoretical contributions to psychoanalysis, most notably the ‘paranoid-schizoid position’ and the ‘depressive position', and she showed how these primitive mental states impact on the adult. Her groundbreaking theories have been taken up and developed by later generations of psychoanalysts. Below is a selection of concepts developed by Klein and her followers.
The definitions are reproduced from the The New Dictionary of Kleinian Thought by Elizabeth Bott Spillius, Jane Milton, Penelope Garvey, Cyril Couve and Deborah Steiner (Routledge, 2011).
Depressive position
The 'depressive position' is a mental constellation that follows the paranoid-schizoid position in the infant's development and is understood to begin in the second six months of life. The baby, gaining in physical and emotional maturity, begins to integrate its fragmented perceptions of its parent and has a more integrated sense of self. Bringing together conflicted feelings of love and hate, realising the hated person and the loved person are one and the same leads to the most anguished sense of guilt and, in time, a wish to repair. It is repeatedly revisited and refined throughout early childhood, and intermittently throughout life.
Envy
The definition of envy used by Klein is the angry feeling that another person possesses and enjoys something else desirable, often accompanied by an impulse to take it away or spoil it.
Internal objects
Klein's observation of children's play led her to see their preoccupation with what went on inside themselves and their experience of the people in their world. 'Internal object' is a term used commonly in Kleinian theory to denote an inner mental and emotional image of an external figure, also known as an external object, together with the experience of that figure. The inner world is seen to be populated with internal objects.
Kleinian technique
In her technique Klein stresses Freud's concept of transference, meaning the conscious but also unconscious expression of past and present experiences, relationships, thoughts, phantasies and feelings, both positive and negative, in relation to the analyst. Klein’s followers have developed her technique further by firstly increasing the focus on the analyst-patient relationship and the secondly in the use of the countertransference as a source of information about the patient.
Oedipus complex
Klein, like Freud, sees the Oedipus complex as central, but modifies and extends his ideas in her new conceptions of an earlier Oedipus situation. She postulates infantile preconception with an exciting and terrifying parental couple, phantasied first as a 'combined figure': the maternal body containing the father's penis and rival babies. Phantasies about the maternal body link to Klein's new understandings of primary femininity and both the male and female Oedipus complexes.
Paranoid-schizoid position
The term 'paranoid-schizoid position' describes a primitive or early mental state in which the self-feels disintegrated. It refers to a constellation of anxieties, defences and internal and external object relations that Klein considers to be characteristic of the earliest months of an infant's life that continues to varying degrees throughout life. The chief characteristic of the paranoid-schizoid position is the splitting of both self and object into good and bad, with at first little or no integration between them.
Pathological organisations
The term 'pathological organisations of the personality' refer to a family of extremely unyielding and tightly knit defences. Their function is to enable patients to avoid overwhelmingly persecutory and depressive anxieties by avoiding emotional contact with others and with internal and external reality.
Projective identification
Projective identification is an unconscious phantasy in which aspects of the self or an internal object are split off and attributed to an external object. Among British Kleinians there is a tacit assumption that 'projection' and 'projective identification' mean the same thing, and that 'projective identification' is an enrichment or extension of Freud's concept of 'projection'.
Reparation
Reparation is integral to the depressive position. It is grounded in love and respect for the separate other and involves facing loss and damage and making efforts to repair and restore one's objects.
Superego
In Klein’s view the superego starts to form at the beginning of life, rather than with the resolution of the Oedipus complex, as Freud theorised. The early superego is very severe and in the process of development becomes less severe and more realistic.
Symbol formation
By analysing children Klein was able to show the symbolic significance of play and how sublimation depends on a capacity to symbolise. Segal further developed Klein's theory of symbols, distinguishing between the symbol proper formed in the depressive position and a more primitive version, the symbolic equation, belonging to paranoid-schizoid functioning.
Unconscious phantasy
Freud introduced the concept of unconscious phantasy and phantasising but Klein and her successors have emphasised that phantasies interact reciprocally with experience to form the developing intellectual and emotional characteristics of the individual; phantasies are considered to be a basic capacity underlying and shaping thought, dream, symptoms and patterns of defence.
Klein's understanding of the child’s deepest fears, and its defences against them, enabled her to make original theoretical contributions to psychoanalysis, most notably the ‘paranoid-schizoid position’ and the ‘depressive position', and she showed how these primitive mental states impact on the adult. Her groundbreaking theories have been taken up and developed by later generations of psychoanalysts. Below is a selection of concepts developed by Klein and her followers.
The definitions are reproduced from the The New Dictionary of Kleinian Thought by Elizabeth Bott Spillius, Jane Milton, Penelope Garvey, Cyril Couve and Deborah Steiner (Routledge, 2011).
Depressive position
The 'depressive position' is a mental constellation that follows the paranoid-schizoid position in the infant's development and is understood to begin in the second six months of life. The baby, gaining in physical and emotional maturity, begins to integrate its fragmented perceptions of its parent and has a more integrated sense of self. Bringing together conflicted feelings of love and hate, realising the hated person and the loved person are one and the same leads to the most anguished sense of guilt and, in time, a wish to repair. It is repeatedly revisited and refined throughout early childhood, and intermittently throughout life.
Envy
The definition of envy used by Klein is the angry feeling that another person possesses and enjoys something else desirable, often accompanied by an impulse to take it away or spoil it.
Internal objects
Klein's observation of children's play led her to see their preoccupation with what went on inside themselves and their experience of the people in their world. 'Internal object' is a term used commonly in Kleinian theory to denote an inner mental and emotional image of an external figure, also known as an external object, together with the experience of that figure. The inner world is seen to be populated with internal objects.
Kleinian technique
In her technique Klein stresses Freud's concept of transference, meaning the conscious but also unconscious expression of past and present experiences, relationships, thoughts, phantasies and feelings, both positive and negative, in relation to the analyst. Klein’s followers have developed her technique further by firstly increasing the focus on the analyst-patient relationship and the secondly in the use of the countertransference as a source of information about the patient.
Oedipus complex
Klein, like Freud, sees the Oedipus complex as central, but modifies and extends his ideas in her new conceptions of an earlier Oedipus situation. She postulates infantile preconception with an exciting and terrifying parental couple, phantasied first as a 'combined figure': the maternal body containing the father's penis and rival babies. Phantasies about the maternal body link to Klein's new understandings of primary femininity and both the male and female Oedipus complexes.
Paranoid-schizoid position
The term 'paranoid-schizoid position' describes a primitive or early mental state in which the self-feels disintegrated. It refers to a constellation of anxieties, defences and internal and external object relations that Klein considers to be characteristic of the earliest months of an infant's life that continues to varying degrees throughout life. The chief characteristic of the paranoid-schizoid position is the splitting of both self and object into good and bad, with at first little or no integration between them.
Pathological organisations
The term 'pathological organisations of the personality' refer to a family of extremely unyielding and tightly knit defences. Their function is to enable patients to avoid overwhelmingly persecutory and depressive anxieties by avoiding emotional contact with others and with internal and external reality.
Projective identification
Projective identification is an unconscious phantasy in which aspects of the self or an internal object are split off and attributed to an external object. Among British Kleinians there is a tacit assumption that 'projection' and 'projective identification' mean the same thing, and that 'projective identification' is an enrichment or extension of Freud's concept of 'projection'.
Reparation
Reparation is integral to the depressive position. It is grounded in love and respect for the separate other and involves facing loss and damage and making efforts to repair and restore one's objects.
Superego
In Klein’s view the superego starts to form at the beginning of life, rather than with the resolution of the Oedipus complex, as Freud theorised. The early superego is very severe and in the process of development becomes less severe and more realistic.
Symbol formation
By analysing children Klein was able to show the symbolic significance of play and how sublimation depends on a capacity to symbolise. Segal further developed Klein's theory of symbols, distinguishing between the symbol proper formed in the depressive position and a more primitive version, the symbolic equation, belonging to paranoid-schizoid functioning.
Unconscious phantasy
Freud introduced the concept of unconscious phantasy and phantasising but Klein and her successors have emphasised that phantasies interact reciprocally with experience to form the developing intellectual and emotional characteristics of the individual; phantasies are considered to be a basic capacity underlying and shaping thought, dream, symptoms and patterns of defence.