Melanie klein believed the first object which the infant relates to in the external world is its mother. Melanie klein 19351992 developed freuds theory, viewing. Object relations theory process of developing a psyche as one. It splits the mother into two very different breasts. Melanie kleins hypothesis that psychic life occurs in two elemental. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Writings of melanie klein 19461963 archaeologists excavation of. Kleinian psychoanalysis routledge handbooks online.
The splitting of good and bad is a defence of the primitive and fragile ego in which the infants fear takes the form of phantasies of persecution. Extending and developing sigmund freuds ideas, klein drew on her analysis of childrens play to formulate new concepts such as the paranoidschizoid position and. I show that by orchestrating a dialogue between melanie klein and sandor ferenczi, we arrive at a fuller and more substantive conception of psychic splitting and. The term splitting was used by klein to describe the central component of the defence mechanism she called the paranoidschizoid position klein, 1946. Melanie klein and then by some postkleinian authors, in particular donald. The immature infant has to organize his chaotic experience, and a primitive structure to the ego is provided by a split into good and bad. Pdf splitting in normal and pathological populations from the. Understanding groups as psychodynamic systems in the context.
Splitting in normal and pathological populations from. After freud, the most important contribution has come from melanie klein, whose work enlightens the idea of splitting of the object objektspaltung in terms of goodbad objects. The hungry infant that finds no breast is in relation to the bad breast. In the 1930s fairbairn became fascinated by melanie klein s theories, particularly about child development. Traces of their influence are discernable in almost every area of contemporary. Introduction to the work and theory of melanie klein and the. Outstanding among these defenses is the mechanism of splitting internal and external objects, emotions, and the ego. Splitting infants tolerate good and bad aspects of themselves and of external. Download biron birkbeck institutional research online. At the heart of fairbairns theory was a notion of endopsychic structure based directly on the vicissitudes of human. Her theories about the development of a childs inner world transformed psychoanalysis and have had a deep and farreaching impact. During the paranoidschizoid position, the infant sees objects around it as either good or bad, according to its experiences with them.
Klein stressed the importance of the first 4 or 6 months after birth. Mechanisms, melanie klein 1946 specifies that splitting can be found in minor degrees and in a. The chief characteristic of the paranoidschizoid position is the splitting of both self and object into good and bad, with at first little or no integration between them. Melanie klein 1946 described idealisation, not in the context of narcissism, but as part of an early defensive splitting and idealisation in which, in an effort to. Pathological fragmentation normal depressive splitting position normal splitting melanie klein has stressed the importance of normal splitting for healthy development segal 1964. This bibliography was generated on cite this for me on tuesday, march 15, 2016. For klein, the primary task of the undeveloped ego is the mastery of anxiety anxiety arising from the operation of. Pdf an analysis of melanie kleins the psychoanalysis of.
Melanie klein the school of life articles formerly the book of life. Fairbairn have been two of the most significant theorists within psychoanalysis during the past 50 years. I argue that although melanie klein s work is often engaged when talking of splitting particularly through discussions on identification, projection and projective identification, there are some important phenomenological opacities in her construction. Oct 08, 2012 fairbairn, melanie klein, donald winnicott, harry guntrip, scott stuart, and others. Typically, though not always, it is bad parts of the self which are expelled in this way, but they are then feared as bad objects. Mar 15, 2016 these are the sources and citations used to research melanie klein. Melanie klein psychology bibliographies cite this for me.
But a careful reader of klein comes away with an impression that she was never overly concerned with contradictions and inconsistencies in the models she was creating. Although profoundly rooted in sigmund freuds thinking, melanie klein asserted that all human beings relate to others from birth and, consequently the transference in psychoanalytic treatment is always alive. Melanie klein s 1946 paper notes on some schizoid mechanisms. Oct 25, 2018 the present paper starts from the reflection that there is a curious phenomenological gap in psychoanalysis when it comes to processes of splitting and to describing the life of psychic fragments resulting from processes of splitting. I shall first define the meaning of the term projective identification and quote from the work of melanie klein, as it was she who developed the concept. Klein s theory of sexuality can be derived from three sources her contributions on female sexuality 1932, ch. She took over the term schizoid in the sense of it used by scottish psychoanalyst, ronald fairbairn, and combined it with hers to coin a new term. In each there can be seen competing but copresent tensions, wrapped up in identification with the split mother figure. In 1903, she married arthur klein and relocated to budapest. Melanie kleins theory of the psychogenesis of the self hinges upon.
Splitting as a defence is a way of managing anxiety by protecting the ego from negative emotions. Klein faced this question and worked with it to develop her ideas, and ends with a follow up question or issue to be addressed in the subsequent chapter. Since homophobia is one of the most destructive forces active in the world today, kleinian theory can be of. Klein, is among those critical of the papers assertions. Kernberg jacques lacan cornelius castoriadis donald meltzer melanie klein was born on march 30, 1882, in vienna, austria. Melanie klein s theory all infants split splitting is looking at an object as either all good or all bad based upon the present experience of that object 1st object is the breast later generalized to the mother if the breast is full of yummy milk providing pleasure to the. Melanie klein in contemporary psychoanalytic practice. This book will greatly appeal to readers from any field seeking a clear and concise introduction to melanie klein. Slides melanie klein unconscious phantasy major criticisms of klein s ideas. Paranoidschizoid position in the paranoidschizoid position, first described by melanie klein in 1946, the earliest experiences of the infant are split between wholly good experiences with good objects and wholly bad experiences with bad objects.
Fairbairn developed a unique psychoanalytic theory that anticipated and laid the groundwork for some of the most important current theoretical advancements in psychoanalysis. Splitting typically refers to an immature defense whereby polarized views of self and others arise due to intolerable conflicting emotions. Object relations theory melanie klein learning theories. Psychoanalytic theory helps us understand the conscious and unconscious processes that affect individual and group functioning. There was, however, from early on, another use of the term splitting in freud, referring rather to resolving ambivalence by splitting the contradictory feelings so that one person is only loved, another one only hated. Melanie klein took psychoanalytic thinking in a new direction by recognising the importance of our earliest childhood experiences in the formation of our adult emotional world. Some writers, like melanie klein, use the term object without always stating whether it. This paper explores how certain key ideas of melanie klein regarding transference, separation, the significance of internal phantasy, the phenomenon of splitting internal objects, and experiences of greed, envy, and gratitude relate to the practice of psychotherapy. Tonight i am going to touch on a vast and relatively obscure topic, and the present paper is necessarily in the. The establishment of a good internal object is thought by klein to be a prerequisite for the later working through of the depressive position. The fundamental problem of all human beings is the schizoid state.
To discuss the importance of affects and unconscious phantasy in klein s theory and kleinian concepts. Melanie klein and object relations theory simply psychology. The equilibrium between the paranoid schizoid and the. Object relations, unconscious phantasy, paranoidschizoid position, depressive position, child development, binary splitting, projective identification. In contrast, melanie klein rejected freuds view of primary narcissism and the phase of undifferentiation at birth and instead proposed a primitive ego structure, which would be engaged in elementary relationships from the outset. Melanie klein was born into a middleclass jewish family in vienna in 1882. Klein s 1932 book, the psychoanalysis of children had a big impact on him, as did her 1935 paper, a contribution to the psychogenesis of manicdepressive states.
Julia kristeva, from her introduction in her book melanie klein, columbia university press, 2001 while freudian unconscious is structured by desire and repression, melanie klein focused on the newborns psychic pain, on his splitting processes and on his early capacity for a rather limited form of sublimation. Splitting occurs when people struggle to cope with a bad experience which creates anxiety. Problems of differentiating between persecutory and depressive anxieties as well as the defenses against specific anxieties. Object relations theory in psychoanalytic psychology is the process of developing a psyche in. Object relations theory is a variation of psychoanalytic theory, which places less emphasis on biological based drives such as the id and more importance on consistent patterns of interpersonal. Oedipus complex klein believed that the oedipus complex begins during the first few months of life, then reaches its zenith during the genital stage, at about 3 or 4 years of age the same time that freud had suggested it began. This document pdf may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. The origin and nature of the object in the theories of klein. It was the latter sense of the term that was predominantly adopted and exploited by melanie klein. A different kind of splitting, fragmentation, in which the object andor the self are split into many and smaller pieces is also a feature of the paranoidschizoid position. She originally intended to attend medical school to study psychiatry like her father, but instead married at the age of. Contemporary readings of melanie klein s theory learning objective.
Splittingandprojective identification minnicks klein. It is often employed in trauma, where a splitoff part holds the. Klein s theory splitting projective identification. Notes on some schizoid mechanisms society for psychoanalytic. The concept was introduced in 1934 by the britishbased austrian psychoanalyst melanie klein 18821960, who explained her preference for the word position to stage or phase in a coauthored book in 1952. The present paper starts from the reflection that there is a curious phenomenological gap in psychoanalysis when it comes to processes of splitting and to describing the life of psychic fragments resulting from processes of splitting. This occurs when a person especially a child cant keep two.
The paranoid phase seemed to be augmented by states in which the mind and the self were themselves split up and therefore damaged. The ego protects itself from the bad ones by a mechanism that splits the ego itself. Melanie klein was a gifted clinician, and arrived at a number of extraordinarily useful clinical observations about deeply unconscious processes. Klein also saw the superego as being quite harsh and cruel. This process of integration is based on the introjection of ih. Projective identification in the paranoidschizoid position described by melanie klein, the ego may split off intolerable experiences by dividing itself, and locating parts of the self in external objects. Marking the end of their long and close friendship, heimann leaves the kleinian group.
Relating object relations theory to child protection social work. Object relations theory outline biography introduction to object relations theory psychic life of the infant fantasies objects positions paranoidschizoid position depressive position psychic defense mechanisms introjection projection splitting projective identification internalization ego superego oedipus complex biography of melanie klein melanie klein was born on march 30, 1882, in. Primal splitting as a basis for emotional and cognitive development. Melanie klein and her followers have developed a rich and profound set of descriptions of the internal psychological forces which govem the darker side of the human condition. While fairbairn popularized the term object relations, melanie kleins work tends to be. Klein s 1921 theory of the unconscious focused on the relationship between the motherinfant rather than the fatherinfant one, and inspired the central concepts of the object relations school within psychoanalysis. On november 24th, klein writes to heimann, asking her to resign as trustee of the newly established melanie klein trust. Objects are initially comprehended in the infant mind by their functions and are termed part objects.
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