Melanie Klein

Melanie Klein (1882-1960), an Austrian psychoanalyst, was renowned for her radical divergence from the Freudian psychoanalysis and her formulation of therapeutic approaches for young children (Kristeva, 2001; Grosskurth, 1986). What fundamentally distinguishes Klein from the Freudian perspective is her belief that intense primitive and psychotic anxieties exist in infants, which are never fully resolved even in adulthood. Klein believed that the primitive unconscious phantasies and impulses are constantly in turmoil. Yet, at the same time, these raging feelings and impulses within the inner world are integral to an individual's ability to think and feel. On the other hand, Freud and his daughter, Anna Freud, argued that the internal world becomes considerably more structured with the resolution of the Oedipus complex at the age of five or six. Essentially, Klein's perspective of a human being as being in a constant state of struggle with the unconscious impulses and emotions is in direct opposition to the neo-Freudians' emphasis on the human ability to adapt to the outer world (Young, 2000).

In this paper, the contribution of Melanie Klein to psychoanalysis will be discussed in greater detail with references to its differences from traditional Freudian psychoanalysis. More importantly, Klein's concepts of positions and projective identification, which lie at the heart of Klein's theory of the development of children, will be presented. Finally, the clinical implicat

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& Holmes, 1995; Segal, 1964). In Klein's (1997) developmental schema of the child, there are two prominent positions: the paranoid schizoid position and the depressive position. The earliest form of the psychological defense, a paranoid schizoid position marks young children's transition from being primarily biological to psychological beings. Infants generate phantasies of persecution after undergoing the difficult experience of childbirth. In order to deal with these feelings, they split the world into good and bad objects. One of the first objects to be split is their mother because she is involved in the first object relation with the infant. While the mother is regarded as a warm and desirable provider, she is also associated with feelings of hunger and frustration. Therefore, infants split their mother into a good provider and an object of frustration. By projecting their feelings of anxiety and hatred outwards through their phantasies, they are able to cope with their anxiety. Klein considered this position to be a normal development as the mental process of splitting allows the infant to learn how to create order in their inner world (Ogden, 1990). In addition, by internalizing the idealized version of a good obj

Category: Psychology - M