Developments in Kleinian Thought: Overview and Personal View Elizabeth Bott Spillius, Ph.D. Of crucial importance in Klein’s work is that it began in… [625417]

(
1994
).
Psychoanalytic Inquiry
,
14
(3):
324-364
Developments in Kleinian Thought: Overview and Personal View
Elizabeth Bott Spillius, Ph.D.
Of crucial importance in Klein's work is that it began in the study and
treatment of children. Klein was not the first analyst to treat children, having
been preceded by the
father
of
Little Hans
under Freud's guidance, and by
Hug-Hellmuth;
Anna Freud
had started analytic work with older children at
about the same time as Klein, though along rather different lines. But Klein
invented an analytic
technique
involving play that gave even very young
children (under three years) a suitable medium for expressing their thoughts
and feelings, a medium that could easily be combined with their developing
capacity to express themselves in
language
. This new
technique
uncovered
new data that slowly gave Klein an unshakable conviction in the
reality
of the
clinical facts she was discovering.
I find the clinical
material
of her early papers about children absolutely
compelling. These papers were among the first I read in
psychoanalysis
, and
certainly the first that seemed real. Rita, Trude, Peter, Ruth, Fritz, and Felix
all became persons in a new but somehow familiar world. Later on I was
puzzled that many of my analytic colleagues found Klein very hard to read and
her theory sometimes preposterous. Her style is not particularly felicitous,
and I had difficulties with the more theoretical papers, but each of the early
clinical papers
—————————————
Elizabeth Bott Spillius, Ph.D. is a
Training
and Supervising Psychoanalyst
of the British Psycho-Analytical
Society
.
Many colleagues have made helpful suggestions about this paper, most
particularly Ronald Britton, Michael Feldman, Peter Fonagy, Betty Joseph,
Ruth Riesenberg Malcolm, Edna O'Shaughnessy, Eric Rayner, Helen
Schoenhals, and John Steiner.
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–
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seemed to me like a good anthropological monograph, social
anthropology
being
my profession at that time and my first intellectual love.
There were vivid data, just enough theory to make sense of the data,
sudden jumps of
imagination
and theoretical understanding that led to the next
paper. I did not find her clinical descriptions or her theory hard to understand;
unconscious phantasy
, internal objects, early sadistic
superego
, psychotic
anxiety
, a world of utterly good and utterly bad objects, attacking one's
mother
's insides, desperate wishes to repair the damage—it all seemed
familiar, deeply consonant with a vague unformulated sense of things I might
have felt as a
child
. Perhaps I found her work so convincing because I knew
very little about
psychoanalysis
and had no prior
attachment
to other theories.
Indeed, it was reading Klein that stimulated me to read Freud (long overdue)
and I found the same sense of discovery of something half-known already.
Then came Bion. Gradually, I read many other psychoanalysts, but none had
the impact of these first three.
Developments in Klein's Thinking
All her life, in spite of the controversies and furor raging around her, Klein
thought of her work as following in the footsteps of Freud, as an extension of
his work. In my view too, there is a consistent allegiance throughout Klein's
work to what she regarded as the essential spirit of Freud's approach and
technique
. But she was an innovator. She regarded the play of a
child
as the
counterpart to the
free association
of an adult. In this play, Klein was fully
prepared to enact many (though not all) of the roles suggested to her by the
child
in order to arrive at an understanding of the
child
's motives and feelings.
She was critical of
Anna Freud
for introducing educational elements into
child analysis
, and for emphasizing the positive
transference
and not
interpreting the negative
transference
(
Klein, 1927a
). The descriptions of
Klein's
technique
with adults years later in 1943 (
King and Steiner, 1991
pp.
635-638
) and in 1952 (
Klein, 1952a
) are basically very similar to her
technique
as she described it in 1927, and she clearly thought that both were
closely based on Freud. (
Anna Freud
, however, thought otherwise. See
King
and Steiner, 1991
pp. 629-634
.)
Klein was an innovator in the theory as well as in the
technique
of
child
analysis
. I find it convenient to divide her work into two phases. Until
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325
–
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1935, she was basically working within the theoretical framework of Freud
and Abraham, though she made many changes in it, some of them inadvertent.
After 1935, with the two papers on the
depressive position
(
Klein, 1935
,
1940
), the paper on the paranoidschizoid
position
(
1946
), and
Envy and
Gratitude
(
1957
), she developed a new theory of her own. (For a general
introduction to the work of Klein, see
Segal, 1974
. See also
Hinshelwood,
1989
;
Meltzer, 1978
;
Caper, 1988
.
Petot, 1990
and
1991
, gives a detailed
textual analysis of the
development
of Klein's thought.
Greenberg and
Mitchell, 1983
, discuss her
position
as an
object
-relations/
drive
–
structure
theorist.
Kernberg, 1969
, and
Yorke, 1971
, present critical reviews.)
The First Period of Klein's Work, 1920-1935
The work of this period is innovative,
complex
, and piecemeal. Klein was
discovering new data and working out new conceptualizations of it so quickly
that her formulations were bound to be inconsistent, especially as she was
holding
fast at the same time to the libidinal phases theory of Freud (
1905
)
and Abraham (
1924
). I have found it convenient to summarize her work
during this period under a number of conceptual headings, which, in keeping
with her explosion of findings and ideas at this time are somewhat
unconnected with one another. Further, some are descriptions of her findings
and ideas, whereas others are my own inferences about her approach. Some
of the ideas of this early period were retained throughout all her work, others
were dropped or reformulated. (For a chronological account of this early
period, see especially the editor's notes in
The Writings of Melanie Klein
,
1975
, and
Petot, 1990
.)
Freud's Drives and Klein's Drives
During this early period Klein seems not to have seen any difference
between her
conception
of drives and Freud's. But imperceptibly she was
making an important conceptual shift. Where Freud thinks of drives as
biological forces that become almost fortuitously attached to objects through
postnatal experiences, for Klein drives are inherently attached to objects.
During this period she had not yet wholly
rejected
the idea of
primary
narcissism
(which she does later,
1952a
), but she was moving in that
direction. Even in the early years hers is an
object
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relations theory. Further, she conceives of the individual's own body not as
the source of biological drives but as the medium by which the psychological
drives of love and hate—mostly hate was explored in these early years—are
expressed (
Greenberg and Mitchell, 1983
). Hence, Klein's approach is
simultaneously a
drive theory
and an
object relations
theory, though her drives
are becoming increasingly psychological rather than biological, and the role
of
anxiety
in affecting their expression becomes increasingly important as her
work develops.
Phantasy
Klein hardly mentions
phantasy
conceptually and gives little sign of
realizing that she was using the concept differently from Freud. Freud uses the
term in different ways, but in his central usage
phantasy
is resorted to when an
instinct
is frustrated (
Freud, 1911
). For Klein
unconscious phantasy
accompanies gratification as well as
frustration
, but, further, it is the basic
stuff of all mental
processes
; it is the mental
representation
of
instincts
. This
view was not formally stated conceptually, however, until
Susan Isaacs
'
article “The nature and function of
phantasy
,” first given in 1943 during the
Controversial Discussions
(
King and Steiner, 1991
) and later published
(
1952
). It is Klein's view that phantasizing is an innate capacity, and that the
content of phantasies, although influenced by experiences with external
objects, is not entirely dependent on them. She thinks that hate is innate; later
she would stress that love too is innate.
Throughout this early period it is implicit that Klein believes that the infant
also has innate
unconscious

knowledge
, however hazy, of objects—
breast
,
mother
, penis, womb, intercourse, birth,
babies
—although she does not state
this unequivocally until much later. (But see
1927b
pp. 175-176.)
Internal Objects and the Inner World
Klein vastly develops the concept of the “inner” world of internal objects,
once again, in this early period, without much conceptual emphasis. In her
early clinical work with children she was very much struck by the fact that the
internal images of parents were very much more ferocious than the actual
parents appeared to be. Gradually, she developed a
conception
of internal
objects and the inner world as built
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327
–
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up through the mechanisms of
introjection
and
projection
, which she believes
operate from the beginning of life. Thus the inner world is not a replica of the
external world
; experiences of the
external world
help to shape the inner
world, and the inner world
affects
the individual's
perception
of the
external
world
. Unlike Freud, she does not restrict the idea of “
internal object
” or
superego
to the single
internalization
of parental figures after the passing of
the
Oedipus complex
. (See
Hinshelwood, 1989
and
Greenberg and
Mitchell, 1983
for detailed descriptions of internal objects.)
The Early Superego and the Oedipus Complex
Klein thinks that the children she treated showed clear signs of an early
and very sadistic
superego
(as well as a more developed
conscience
), which
did not correspond to their real parents and which Klein thinks is based on
their own sadistic phantasies. (Freud acknowledged this statement of Klein's
in “Civilization and its discontents,”
1930
p. 130.) Klein dates the
Oedipus
complex
progressively earlier and earlier, finally
linking
it to
weaning
. At
times, like Freud, she links the
development
of the
superego
to the
Oedipus
complex
; at others she says that the first introjected
object
can assume
superego
functions.
Sadism and Psychotic Anxiety
In her very first papers Klein emphasized libidinal drives and their
expression in
unconscious phantasy
in every activity. (See especially Petot's
discussion,
1990
.) Klein here means libidinal not in the general sense of
“loving” or “life-giving,” but in the sense of
sexuality
, involving a somewhat
ruthless pursuit in
phantasy
of sexual aims. Soon afterward she began, with
characteristic enthusiasm, to explore a new terrain, that of
aggression
and
destructiveness, which at this period she almost always called
sadism
. Up
until Freud's “
Beyond the pleasure principle
” (
1920
) and even later,
aggression
was generally neglected in
psychoanalysis
as a phenomenon in its
own right; it was usually spoken of as a
component
of the libidinal
instinct
. In
this early period and indeed throughout her work Klein thinks that the
mother
's
breast
, her body, and the parental intercourse are the main targets for the
projection
in
phantasy
of destructive impulses. This means that the
breast
, the
mother
, and the parental intercourse come to be felt as
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328
–
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cruel persecutors, and they are then aggressively attacked. During this early
period Klein develops the concept of the “combined
object
,” the
phantasy
of a
hostile
mother

containing
a hostile penis. Sadistic phantasies arouse intense
anxiety
, which Klein feels can be the basis of
childhood

psychosis
and of
adult mental
illness
. She develops, in this connection, a new
conception
of
obsessional
neurosis
as a
defense
against early psychotic
anxiety
instead of
regarding it as a
regression
to a
fixation
point in the anal
phase
of libidinal
development
. (See especially
1932
pp. 149-175
.)
Klein's concentration on
sadism
must certainly have been affected by the
change in Freud's (
1920
) theory of
instincts
outlined in “
Beyond the pleasure
principle
” and by Abraham's (
1924
) work on oral and anal
sadism
, but I think
the main reason for her stress on it came from her clinical work with children,
for she found that the children she analyzed had extremely ruthless sadistic
phantasies about which they characteristically felt very guilty. She then
extends her ideas backward to construct a theory of
sadism
in
infancy
, and she
thinks of
sadism
as an important root of the epistemophilic
instinct
. Toward
the end of this
phase
of her work she begins to distinguish descriptively
between
anxiety
and
guilt
. But she makes little use of the idea of love during
this early period. And in spite of her emphasis on
sadism
, it is not until 1932
in
The Psycho-Analysis of Children
that she begins to use Freud's idea of the
death

instinct
, and to mention the
conflict
between life-
instinct
and
death
–
instinct
. Even so, she does not really use the idea of the
conflict
conceptually until the later
phase
of her work.
The Epistemophilic Instinct and Symbolism
In her very earliest papers Klein talks about the epistemophilic
instinct
as
rooted in
libido
and expressed in all the
child
's activities. Gradually, she
comes to think of
sadism
as a crucial element in the urge to know. She thinks
the infant feels the
mother's body
to be the source of all good (and bad) things,
including the
father
's penis, and in
phantasy
the
child
attacks the
mother's body
both out of
frustration
and in order to get possession of her riches. Such
phantasied sadistic attacks arouse
anxiety
, which can be a spur to
development
. Combined with phantasies of projecting
sadism
into the
mother
,
anxiety
about attacks on her body means that her body is felt to become
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–
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dangerous. The
child
is then constantly impelled to find new and less
dangerous objects, to make new equations, a process that forms the basis of
symbolism
and the
development
of interest in new objects. Klein makes it
clear that such equations are what gives life to children's play, and that the
same
processes
are the basis of
transference
. If
anxiety
about attacking the
mother's body
becomes excessive, it leads to
inhibition
,
neurosis
, and in very
severe cases to
psychosis
, as in the case of Dick discussed in “The
importance of
symbol
-formation in the
development
of the ego” (
Klein,
1930
).
The Development of the Boy and the Girl
Here Klein puts forward new ideas of
development
, emphasizing the
importance of the phantasied sadistic attacks on the
mother's body
, with their
accompanying fear of retaliation and the formation of a severe
superego
. She
thinks that both boys and girls go through a “feminine
phase
” in which, out of
frustration
by the
mother
and fear of her retaliation for their attacks on her,
they turn away from the
mother
to seek
satisfaction
from the
father
and his
penis; the phantasied
relation
with the
mother
during this
phase
is one of
identification
in which the
child
“becomes” the
mother
in order to take her
place with the
father
(
1928
), a forerunner of at least one form of her later idea
of
projective identification
(
1946
). In girls this
phase
is the basis of future
femininity
, in boys it is normally overcome as oedipal desires increase. Klein
thinks the girl has a lasting fear of damage to the inside of her body because of
the sadistic attacks she has made on her
mother
, and that this is for girls the
counterpart of
castration

anxiety
in boys. In
The Psycho-Analysis of Children
(
1932
), Klein further discusses the complexities of the
development
of the
boy and the girl, stressing, like some other female analysts of the period, the
girl's awareness of her vagina. In the later
phase
of her work Klein revised
some of her early views on sexual
development
(
1945
). Klein's views on
sexual
development
have interested certain analysts and some feminists, but
so far none of her British colleagues has taken up her work in this area.
Phases
In her theoretical formulations of this period Klein stuck to the idea of the
phases of the
libido
outlined by Freud (
1905
) and to the further
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330
–
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divisions within them prepounded by Abraham (
1924
), but it is beginning to
be apparent that she thinks that anal and
phallic
phantasies may occur
alongside oral ones.
One gets the impression that in her clinical observations she largely
disregarded the phases, which creates a certain discordance between her
theory and her clinical reports.
The Effect of External Parents
In spite of developing an
object
-relational theory rather than a solely
biological-
drive theory
, Klein does not stress conceptually the actual external
parents' personalities and
behavior
as part of her theoretical system. She
frequently mentions the importance of parents, and her clinical work shows
that she related children's
behavior
and phantasies to the
behavior
and
character
of the actual parents (see especially Part 1 of
The Psycho-Analysis
of Children
,
1932
and later
The Narrative of a Child Analysis
,
1960b
), but in
her theory, especially in the early period, she tends to stress the role of
parents as correctives and mitigating factors modifying the anxieties arising
from the
child
's inherently sadistic phantasies. In the later period of her work
she explicitly states the importance of the
environment
(
1935
p. 285;
1952c, p.
94
p. 98;
1955
p. 14ln3;
1957, p. 179, p. 185n2
pp. 229-230
;
1959
pp. 248-249;
1963
p. 312). But it is clear even in the later period that Klein thinks that, even
though the
character
and
behavior
of parents is extremely important in shaping
the
child
's
development
, the
child
's constitution is also an extremely important
factor and the
child
is a very active agent. This view of Klein's has frequently
been mistaken as meaning that she thinks the parents (the “
environment
”) are
unimportant, and she has been much criticized for it.
Klein's Approach to Freud's Theories
Klein appears not to have been explicitly interested in the more abstract
aspects of Freud's theories, especially his early theories. The idea of the
System
Unconscious
with its own special logic of the
primary process
does
not seem to have caught her
imagination
; she left it to her colleagues to point
out that many of the qualities of the System
Unconscious
are worked into her
concept of
unconscious phantasy
. She does not distinguish between ideas and
feelings that are descriptively
unconscious
from those that are dynamically
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unconscious
. Perhaps because her early work was not rooted in the
topographical
model, she does not make a point of the fact that Freud's
development
of the structural approach in place of the earlier
topographical
model meant a major change in his basic model of the mind. Her theoretical
ideas begin from the structural model of Freud's “The ego and the id” (
1923
),
though she uses his terms somewhat differently and her use of the structural
model differed from his because she incorporated her ideas about
object
relations
as an integral part of it. The
superego
is, for her, earlier and more
complex
than for Freud. Her idea of the id is not so rooted in biology as
Freud's. In the case of the ego, Klein never really distinguishes between the
ego and
the self
, and throughout her work she uses the terms almost
interchangeably, though of course Freud often did this too. Klein does not
seem to have realized how important in Freud's
thinking
was the change in the
conception
of
anxiety
from that of dammed-up
libido
to that of a signal. Even
in the early period of her work she was beginning to think of
anxiety
as a
response to destructive forces within the
personality
.
Klein's New Theory: The Paranoid-Schizoid and Depressive
Positions, 1935-1960
The work Klein had done up until 1932, piecemeal and incomplete, was
followed by a great leap of
imagination
that brought her previous work to a
new synthesis. This was not occasioned by a new method such as the
play
technique
as her earlier work had been; it involved the forming of new
thoughts about already known clinical facts and partly worked-out concepts. It
is a remarkable achievement of theoretical formulation, perhaps surprising
and even mysterious given that Klein was never preoccupied with theory
building as an end in itself.
The new theory consists basically of the delineation of two sets of
anxieties, defenses, and
object relations
which Klein calls the “
paranoid-
schizoid position
” and the “
depressive position
.” It has not been easy for
other analysts to understand, and many, especially in the United States, have
not considered it important or plausible enough to be worth the effort. In
Britain, much of Europe, and in South America, however, the theory has had
considerable influence, and it is the theory of this later period that has been
the basis for most of the developments worked out by Klein's contemporary
and later colleagues.
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The theory is expounded in four main papers: “A contribution to the
psychogenesis
of manic-depressive states” (
1935
); “
Mourning
and its
relation
to manic-depressive states” (
1940
); “Notes on some
schizoid
mechanisms”
(
1946
); and
Envy and Gratitude
(
1957
). A concise statement of the theory is
given in “Some theoretical conclusions regarding the emotional life of the
infant” (
1952b
), though without including the concept of envy.
The new theory makes two main changes in the conceptions I have
described in the previous section as typical of the first period of Klein's
thought. I believe that these changes are necessary for the formation of the
new theory, but they are also, somewhat paradoxically, a consequence of it.
First, she reformulates her earlier descriptions of
sadism
and
aggression
in
terms of an interaction of life and
death instincts
as expressed in love and
hate. In her view of the
death

instinct
, Klein follows Freud quite closely,
especially when she is making formal theoretical definitions of it; in clinical
contexts she often speaks of “destructive
instincts
” or “aggressive
instincts
”
and sometimes “self-destructive
instincts
” without explaining each time the
way in which such
instincts
are derived from the
death

instinct
. In keeping
with her view that
instincts
are inherently attached to objects, Klein's
formulation of the
death

instinct
is more clinically directed and less
biological and philosophical than Freud's. Where Freud thinks that
the
Unconscious
contains no idea of
death
or
annihilation
(
1923
p. 57
;
1926
p.
129
), Klein (
1948
) thinks “there is in
the unconscious
a fear of
annihilation
of
life” (p. 29). For Klein, this fear of
annihilation
is the
primary

anxiety
, more
basic than birth
anxiety
,
separation anxiety
, or
castration

anxiety
. Where
Freud attributes the deflection of the
death

instinct
to “the organism,” Klein
attributes it to the ego (
1948
pp. 28-30;
1957
pp. 190-191
;
1958
p. 237). Klein
thinks that part of the
death

instinct
is projected into the primal
object
, the
breast
, which thereby becomes a persecutor, while part is retained within the
personality
; some of this remaining internal
death

instinct
is turned against the
persecuting
object
as
aggression
(
1946
pp. 4-5;
1958
p. 238n). Like Freud
(
1923
p. 54
) she thinks that some of the internal
death

instinct
is bound by
libido
, but she also thinks that some of it remains unfused and continues to be
an active source of
anxiety
to the individual about
being
annihilated from
within.
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Accompanying her reformulation of
sadism
and
aggression
in terms of their
derivation from the
death

instinct
, Klein greatly increases her use of the ideas
of love and
libido
, and of the
conception
of the
good object
as the core of
normal
ego development
. Klein had noted the interplay of love and hate in the
late 1920s and early 1930s, but at that time she did not make much conceptual
use of it. In the later period this interplay becomes central to her new
conceptions of the paranoid-
schizoid
and depressive positions.
The second major change after 1935 is that Klein greatly reduces her
adherence to Freud's and Abraham's
conception
of instinctual phases in favor
of changing modes of internal (and external)
object relations
. She continues to
think that oral expressions of love and hate come first, but she thinks that they
are overlapped with, rather than sequentially followed by, anal, urethral,
phallic
, and genital modes of expression. Instead of “
phase
,” in her new
theory she speaks of “
position
,” that is, an organization of typical anxieties,
defense mechanisms
, and
object relations
. Klein thinks that in
infancy
the
paranoid-schizoid position
comes first and is then followed by the
depressive
position
, but she uses the word “
position
” rather than “
phase
” to emphasize
that throughout
childhood
and indeed also in later life there may be fluctuation
between the two organizations. Positions as she conceives of them are thus
not phases which one passes through and leaves behind. This changed
conception
made it possible for some of her colleagues, especially Bion, to
detach the idea of “positions” still further from an assumed developmental
sequence of
infancy
, to the point where the positions are conceived as “states
of mind” regardless of the chronological age at which they are experienced.
This emphasis has helped many analysts look for
moment
-to-
moment
shifts in
a session from
integration
and
depressive anxiety
toward
fragmentation
and
sometimes
persecution
, rather than looking only for major shifts of
character
and orientation.
The Paranoid-Schizoid Position
At first Klein used the term “
paranoid position
”; later she added the word
“
schizoid
” in
recognition
of Fairbairn's work (
Fairbairn, 1941
,
1944
) on
splitting of the ego
and its
relation
to
schizoid
states.
Klein thinks that the normal
paranoid-schizoid position
occurs in the first
three months of
infancy
and is characterized by persecutory
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anxiety
, that is, fear of
annihilation
from within and, because the feared
malignancy is in
phantasy
projected outward, from without as well. She
assumes that the infant experiences sensations as “caused” by malevolent or
benevolent objects. Thus, hunger in her view is not just an experience of “no-
food-is-here” but something like “that
object
is starving me to
death
,” or
“something terrible is attacking me.” A feeling of comfort would be attributed
to the benign motive of a
good object
. It is clear that Klein thinks infants
distinguish between self and
object
, between me and not-me, from birth,
though the distinction is based on perceptions shaped by
phantasy
and by
phantasied attributions of motive, and are thus, presumably, very different
from the perceptions that would be made by an adult observer. Of course any
phrasing of such early perceptions in words is misleading. Isaacs (
1952
)
assumes that these very early events are first experienced as sensations, then
gradually draw upon plastic images— from sight, sound, kinestheses, touch,
smell, taste—before becoming linked with words.
The
concern
in this very early period is for oneself, not yet for one's
object
. Klein assumes that
anxiety
about
being
annihilated from within is dealt
with by
splitting
and
projection
. The infant splits good from bad feelings and
in
phantasy
projects both into objects felt to be external, “not me,” so that both
the ego (self) and
object
are split. The infant thus lives in a world in which he
and some of his objects are extremely bad whereas other objects and other
aspects of himself are extremely good. Emotions are labile; good rapidly
changes into bad and vice versa, and there is no
recognition
that the good and
the
bad object
are the same person. The infant thus lives in a world of “
part-
objects
,” in the sense that what would to an outside observer be one
object
is
to the infant at least two (good and bad). Further, Klein assumes that the first
object
is a
part object
, the
breast
, but in Klein's view this “
breast
” is not just
a purveyor of food, a satisfier of
instinct
; it is the source of love, of life itself.
She tacitly assumes that in early
infancy
anatomical
part-objects
are normally
perceived and treated as if they were whole objects and that whole objects
may be treated as if they were parts. Full
recognition
of the
identity
of objects
as wholes and of oneself as a whole in her view comes later, in the
depressive position
.
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335
–
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Klein uses the term “
projective identification
” to describe a
complex
set of
processes
: part of
the self
is split off and projected into an
object
, the
individual reacts to the
object
as if it were
the self
or the part of
the self
that
has been projected into it. The individual who projects in this way will then
in
phantasy

introject
the
object
as colored by what he or she has projected
into it. It is through such constant interplay that the inner world of self and
internal objects is built up.
Splitting
,
projection
, and
introjection
are the
characteristic mental mechanisms of the
paranoid-schizoid position
,
accompanied by
idealization
,
denigration
, and
denial
.
Omnipotence
of thought
is thus characteristic of the
paranoid-schizoid position
. Klein (
1946
) notes
that when
projection
is excessive, objects and
the self
become fragmented, but
she does not yet explain why
projection
should be excessive in some
individuals and much less pronounced in others.
Klein thinks that failure in working through the persecutory
anxiety
and
tendency to split of the
paranoid-schizoid position
are basic preconditions for
paranoid and schizophrenic
illness
.
In later work Klein makes important additions. In
Envy and Gratitude
(
1957
), she states that a marked degree of
primary
envy, which she regards as
a
constitutional factor
, leads to a pathological
paranoid-schizoid position
.
Because envy attacks the
good object
, it arouses a premature experience of
depressive anxiety
about damage to the
good object
, and interferes with the
primal differentiation between good and bad in the
object
and in
the self
.
Hence, it is likely to result in confusion and, in very severe cases, to
confusional states
. (See also
Rosenfeld, 1950
.) Such a
breakdown
of normal
splitting
leads to difficulty in working through the
paranoid-schizoid position
and in proceeding to a normal experience of the
depressive position
.
In a late paper, Klein (
1958
) suggests that the bad objects of the
paranoid-
schizoid position
are not the most terrifying objects; the most terrifying figures
are split off into an area of the deep
unconscious
that remains apart from the
normal developmental
processes
that give rise to the
superego
. She does not,
however, fully work out this idea or integrate it with her other work.
The Depressive Position
Klein believes that at about three to six months, the infant's
object relations
change from
relation
to a
part-object
to
relation
to a whole
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336
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object
. Although she does not explicitly say so, Klein seems to base this time
frame on the well-known observation that at some time between three and six
months infants begin to look more “human” and to behave in a much more
integrated way. Klein supplements this sort of casual observation with more
systematic observations by Ribble (
1944
). Klein (
1952c
) made her own
observations of infants, but these observations are examples based on her
theoretical formulations rather than raw data from which her formulations
were derived.
In Klein's view of the
depressive position
, the good and the bad
mother
are
seen to be the same person; the infant begins to feel that the good
mother
he
loves has been damaged by the attacks he has made and continues to make on
the bad
mother
, for they are one and the same. This
realization
is extremely
painful and gives rise to what Klein calls “
depressive anxiety
” as distinct
from the persecutory
anxiety
of the
paranoid-schizoid position
. It consists of a
mixture of
concern
for the
object
, fear of its
being
damaged beyond repair,
guilt
, and a sense of responsibility for the damage one has done. The
individual is afraid of losing the
object
and has a strong urge to repair the
damage. The actual state of the
external object
is extremely important; if the
mother
appears to be damaged, the
child
's
guilt
and despair are increased. If
she appears well, or at least able to empathize with her
child
's problems
about her state, the
child
's fear of his destructiveness is decreased and trust in
his reparative wishes is increased. The idea of
reparation
, already introduced
in “Infantile
anxiety
situations reflected in a work of art and in the creative
impulse
” (
1929
), now becomes a key concept. The pain of the new
integration
is sometimes so great that it leads to defenses characteristic of the
depressive
position
such as manic and obsessional
reparation
,
denial
, triumph, and
contempt
. If these defenses fail, the individual may retreat temporarily or for
longer periods to the defenses characteristic of the
paranoid-schizoid
position
.
The favorable outcome of the
depressive position
is the secure
internalization
of the
good object
, which in Klein's view becomes the “core of
the ego,” the basis of security and self-respect. The individual's future mental
health and capacity to love depend on this
internalization
. Failure to achieve
it constitutes the psychic basis of manic-depressive
illness
.
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In her 1940 paper Klein also adds normal
mourning
to the phenomena of
the
depressive position
.
Mourning
in later life reactivates the
depressive
position
of
infancy
and indeed leads for a time to a feeling of losing all
internal goodness.
Mourning
that is successfully worked through leads to a
deeper and stronger establishment of the good
internal object
.
In her new theory, Klein makes a crucial and most interesting link between
the
Oedipus complex
, Freud's “nuclear
complex
of the neuroses,” and the
depressive position
. She notes that the onset of the
depressive position
coincides with the beginning of the
Oedipus complex
, and says that the
sorrow about feared loss of good objects in the
depressive position
is the
source of the most painful oedipal conflicts, for attacks on one's oedipal rival
are simultaneously attacks on one's loved
object
(
Klein, 1940
p. 345;
1952c
p.
110;
1957
p. 196
;
1958
p. 239).
In later papers Klein makes additions to some of her early findings; among
several others she notes that the dreaded combined
object
of her earlier work
is modified, in the
depressive position
, by a
conception
of internal and
external parents in a happy
relation
with each other (
1952b
). She revises her
earlier views of the
Oedipus complex
(
1945
). She notes, too, that transitory
experiences of
depressive anxiety
and
guilt
can occur in
relation
to
part-
objects
in the
paranoid-schizoid position
(
1948
,
1960a
).
The delineation of the paranoid-
schizoid
and depressive positions,
combined with the role of early envy in exacerbating the difficulties of the
paranoid-schizoid position
, constitutes Klein's final theoretical statement,
integrating most of her earlier ideas into a new constellation. The concepts of
the
paranoid-schizoid position
and the
depressive position
have proved to be
exceedingly rich, so much so that their expressions and implications are still
being
explored.
Developments by Klein's Colleagues in Britain
A central feature since the 1950s in Britain has been a decline in the
amount of
psychoanalysis
of children by Kleinian analysts, although
child
psychotherapy
has developed rapidly as a profession. Analysts who continue
to work with children are especially interested in trying
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338
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to bring together developments in
child analysis
with technical developments
that have been worked out with adults.
Interest shifted first to analysis of psychotic patients, especially evident in
the papers of Bion, Rosenfeld, and Segal in the 1950s. Work with psychotic
patients has continued, though fewer papers have been written about them
since the 1950s, and the number of papers about
borderline
and narcissistic
patients has greatly increased. Many developments have occurred through
continued work with these and other types of patients: refinements in the
concept of
projective identification
; new theories of
thinking
; new ideas about
the paranoid-
schizoid
and depressive positions; and changes in
technique
.
(My discussion of these topics is closely based on the introductions I have
already written to the various sections of
Melanie Klein Today
,
1988
.)
Studies of Psychosis
Working with psychotic patients gave many of the analysts who undertook
it a deep conviction that the
thinking
of psychotic patients could be
comprehensible and that Klein's ideas about the anxieties and defenses of the
paranoid-schizoid position
were profoundly useful in understanding the way
very disturbed infantile
object relations
inhabit the inner world of the
psychotic patient and that these relations could be understood as they were
lived out in the relationship with the analyst. This work led Segal and Bion to
develop ideas about the process of
thinking
, and Rosenfeld to productive
studies of many topics including
confusional states
,
homosexuality
in
relation
to
paranoia
,
narcissism
, and
borderline
states. (See
Rosenfeld, 1965
,
1987
.)
The Term Projective Identification
Although Klein defined the term “
projective identification
” almost
casually and was apparently always somewhat doubtful about its value
because of the ease with which it could be misused (
Segal, 1982
), the term
has gradually become the most popular of her concepts, the only one that has
been widely accepted and discussed by psychoanalysts generally, even though
this discussion is sometimes incompatible with Klein's
conception
.
As I have described elsewhere (
Spillius, 1988
pp. 81-86;
1992
) there has
been much discussion about whether the term should be used
–
339
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to refer only to instances where the recipient is emotionally affected by the
projection
. In my view such restriction would be unwise, for it would greatly
limit the usefulness of the concept and is in any case contrary to the way Klein
herself used it. I think the term is best kept broad enough to include both cases
in which the recipient is emotionally affected and those in which he is not. It
might be useful, however, to have distinguishing adjectives to describe
various subtypes of
projective identification
; “evocatory” might be used to
describe the sort where the recipient is put under
pressure
to have the feelings
appropriate to the projector's
phantasy
.
Most of the other questions that have developed in the use of the concept
are best answered in the same way, that is, by using the concept as a general
term within which various subtypes can be differentiated. The many motives
for
projective identification
—to control the
object
, to acquire its attributes, to
evacuate a bad quality, to protect a good quality, to avoid
separation
(
Rosenfeld 1971a
)—are all most usefully kept under the general umbrella.
It is perhaps unfortunate that Bion did not develop a special term for the
behavior
the individual uses to induce another person to behave in
accordance with his or her phantasies of
projective identification
. When
analyzing psychotic patients, Bion spoke in very concrete
language
, because
that was the way his patients thought; thus he would say, for example, “You
are pushing your fear of murdering me into my insides” (
Bion, 1955
). This led
for a time to a fashion, especially among relatively inexperienced analysts, of
speaking
conceptually
of phantasies actually
being
physically put into the
analyst's mind. Such usage has been sharply criticized by Sandler (
1987
),
who employs the useful terms “actualization” and “role-responsiveness” to
describe the
processes
by which projectors get their objects to feel and
behave in a way that will satisfy the projectors'
unconscious
wishes (
1976a
,
1976b
,
Sandler and Sandler, 1978
). The current practice among British
Kleinian analysts, partly because of the criticisms of Sandler and others, and
especially because of the work of Joseph (
1989
), is to distinguish
conceptually between
projective identification
as a
phantasy
, and the
behavior
unconsciously used by the individual to get the
object
to behave in
accordance with the
phantasy
.
Another change is that the term used to be used almost entirely to
characterize a very pathological, primitive
defense
. It continues to be
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340
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used in that way when the patient
being
described is functioning mainly in the
paranoid-schizoid position
, but it is also used to describe less pathological
attributions of self and internal objects to external objects, attributions that are
the basis of
empathy
and characteristic of the
depressive position
. This
distinction between normal and pathological
projective identification
has
been made largely because of the work of Bion (
1962a
,
1962b
,
1963
).
Work on Symbolism, Thinking, and Experiencing
Two of Klein's ideas have been important starting points for later work on
thinking
. The first is her theory of symbols described earlier, and the second
is her idea of
projective identification
.
In a work paper on
symbol
formation developed from Klein's ideas about
symbolism
, Segal (
1957
) distinguishes between
symbol
formation in the
paranoid-schizoid position
, which she calls “
symbolic equation
,” and
symbol
formation in the
depressive position
, which she calls “
symbolism
proper.” In
symbolic
equations the
symbol
is confused with the
object
to the point of
being
the
object
; her example is a psychotic man who could not play the
violin because it meant masturbating in public. In such a state of mind, the ego
is confused with the
object
through
projective identification
; since the ego
creates the
symbol
, the
symbol
also is confused with the
object
. In the
depressive position
, where there is greater awareness of differentiation and
separateness between ego and
object
, and
recognition
of
ambivalence
toward
the
object
, the
symbol
—a creation of the ego—is recognized as separate from
the
object
. It
represents
the
object
instead of
being
equated with it, and it
becomes available to displace
aggression
and
libido
from the original objects
onto others, as Klein described in her
symbolism
paper (
1930
).
Bion used the idea of
projective identification
to develop a
theory of
thinking
that has had a profound effect on the conceptual and technical
repertoire of many analysts (
1965
,
1967a
,
1962b
,
1963
). In this body of work
Bion suggests three models for understanding the process of
thinking
.
The first model is similar to Segal's (
1964
) idea of an
unconscious
phantasy

being
used as a hypothesis for testing against
reality
. In Bion's
formulation, a “
preconception
” of, for example, a
breast
, is mated with a
“
realization
,” that is, an actual
breast
, which gives rise to
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341
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a
conception
, which is a form of thought. He thinks of the
preconception
as
part of the individual's inherent mental equipment, an idea that has affinity
with Freud's (
1916-1917
) inherited phantasies, with Klein's (
1952c
,
1959
)
notion that the infant has an innate idea of the
mother
and the
breast
, and with
the developmental psychologists' idea of predesigning (
Stern, 1985
).
In the second model, a
preconception
encounters a negative
realization
, a
frustration
, that is, no
breast
available for
satisfaction
. What happens next
depends on the hypothetical infant's capacity to stand
frustration
. Klein had
pointed out that in earliest experience an absent, frustrating
object
is felt to be
a
bad object
. Bion took this idea further. If the infant's capacity for enduring
frustration
is great, the no-
breast

perception
or experience is transformed into
a thought, which helps the infant to endure the
frustration
by making it
possible for him or her to use the “no-
breast
” thought for
thinking
, that is, to
make contact with, and stand, his or her
persecution
. Gradually this capacity
evolves into an ability to imagine that the bad feeling of
being
frustrated is
actually occurring because there is a
good object
that is absent and that may
or may not return. If, however, capacity for
frustration
is low, the no-
breast
experience does not develop into the thought of a “good
breast
absent;” it
exists as a “bad
breast
present;” it is felt to be a bad concrete
object
that must
be disposed of by evacuation, that is, by omnipotent
projection
. If this process
becomes entrenched, true symbols and
thinking
cannot develop.
The third model has come to be called “the formulation of the
container
and the
contained
” (
Bion, 1962b
; see also
O'Shaughnessy, 1981a
). In this
model the infant has some sort of sensory
perception
, need, or feeling that
feels bad and that the infant wants to get rid of. The infant behaves in a way
“reasonably calculated to arouse in the
mother
feelings of which the infant
wishes to be rid” (
Bion, 1962a
p. 114). The
projective identification
in itself
is an omnipotent
phantasy
, but it also leads to
behavior
that arouses the same
sort of feeling in the
mother
. If the
mother
is reasonably well-balanced and
capable of what Bion calls “
reverie
,” she can accept and transform the
feelings into a tolerable form that the infant can reintroject. This process of
transformation
Bion calls “
alpha function
.” If all goes reasonably well, the
infant reintrojects not only the particular bad thing transformed into something
tolerable, but also, in time, the function itself, and thus he
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342
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or she has the embryonic means for tolerating
frustration
and for
thinking
.
Symbolization
, a “
contact barrier
” between
conscious
and
unconscious
,
dream
thoughts, and concepts of space and time can develop.
The process can, of course, go wrong, either because of the
mother
's
incapacity for
reverie
or the infant's envy and intolerance of the
mother
's
being
able to do what the infant cannot. If the
object
cannot or will not contain
projections—and here the real properties experienced in the
external object
are extremely important—the individual resorts to increasingly forceful
projective identification
. Reintrojection is effected with similar force.
Through such forceful reintrojection the individual develops an
internal
object
that will not accept projections; that is felt to strip the individual
greedily of all the goodness the individual takes in; that is omniscient,
moralizing, and uninterested in truth and
reality testing
. With this willfully
misunderstanding
internal object
, the individual identifies, and the
stage
may
be set for
psychosis
.
Of all Bion's ideas, the notions of
container
and
contained
and
alpha
function
have been the most widely accepted and more or less well
understood. Their adoption has led to a less pejorative attitude toward
patients' use of
projective identification
and to a better conceptualization of
the distinction between normal and pathological
projective identification
. The
container
/
contained
model of the
development
of
thinking
has lessened the
divide between emotion and
cognition
. Further, to Bion the
external object
is
an integral part of the system. As described earlier, Klein has often been
accused, wrongly I think, of paying no
attention
to the
environment
. Bion
shows not only that the
environment
is important, which Klein stated, but also
how it is important. The importance of the
environment
had been stressed by
many other British analysts (see
Rayner, 1991
), especially Fairbairn (
1941
,
1944
), Bowlby (
1944
,
1951
), and Winnicott (
1945
,
1950-1955
,
1952
,
1956
,
1960
,
Rodman, 1987
pp. 89-93, 114-146) before Bion's formulation of the
container
/
contained
model of
thinking
. The distinctive feature of Bion's
construction
is that it uses the ideas of
projection
and
introjection
to describe
the
dynamic
involved in the mutual interaction of the
container
and the
contained
. He puts a particular emphasis on mental understanding: mental
understanding by the other, in his view, is what makes it possible for the
individual to
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develop mental understanding in himself and thus to move towards having a
mind of his own and an awareness of the minds of others. Further, Bion
focuses
attention
not only on the effect of the
container
on the
contained
, but
also of the
contained
on the
container
. His is an internal notion, concerned
with the modification of thoughts and feelings by
thinking
. It is a model that he
describes rather than an empirical description; it can be applied not only to a
mother
giving meaning to an infant's fear, or to an envious infant developing
an envious
superego
(the particular
mother
-baby examples Bion describes),
but also to many other forms of interaction, including of course the
analytic
process
.
In “A
theory of thinking
” (
Bion, 1962a
), and indeed in his later work, Bion
did not do as much as he might have to link his three models of
thinking
. It is
surely repeated experiences of alternations between positive and negative
realizations that encourage the
development
of thoughts and
thinking
. And the
return of an absent
mother
gives rise to a particularly important instance,
repeated many times in
childhood
(and in analysis), of a
mother
taking in and
transforming, or failing to transform, the bad-
breast
-present experience.
Bion (
1962b
) further elaborates the model of
container
/
contained
and
thinking
as an
emotional experience
of getting to know oneself or another
person, which he designates as “K,” as distinct from the more usual
psychoanalytic preoccupations with love (L) and hate (H). He also describes
the evasion of knowing and truth, which he calls “minus K.” He says that K is
as essential for psychic health as food is for physical well-
being
. In other
words, K is synonymous with Klein's epistemophilic
instinct
, though in a
more elaborated form.
Bion also develops the idea of fluctuation between the paranoid-
schizoid
and depressive positions, which he represents by the sign
⇄
, as a factor in the
development
of
thinking
. This movement back and forth from the
paranoid-
schizoid
to the
depressive position
was originally pointed out by
Klein herself, but Bion focuses on the dimension of dispersal and
disintegration
(Ps) on one hand and
integration
(D) on the other, ignoring for
the time
being
the other elements of the paranoid-
schizoid
and depressive
constellations as described by Klein. Further, Bion's formulation draws
attention
to the positive aspects of the paranoid-
schizoid
chaos, to the need to
be able to face the possibility of a catastrophic feeling of
disintegration
and
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meaninglessness. If one cannot tolerate the dispersal and threatened
meaninglessness of the
paranoid-schizoid position
, one may of course break
down; one may push toward
integration
prematurely; or one may try to hold on
to a particular state of
integration
and meaning past its time (see
Eigen,
1985
).
Bion's work on
thinking
is used by many analysts and is still
being
developed and explored, particularly in Britain by O'Shaughnessy (
1981a
,
1992
) and Britton (
1989
,
1992b
, and this issue).
Elsewhere (
Spillius, 1988
p. 158;
1989
pp. 107-109), I have briefly
described Bick's (
Bick, 1968
,
1986
, see also
Anzieu, 1989
) theory that there
is in infantile
development
a
phase
of “
unintegration
” and “
adhesive
identification
” that precedes the
processes
of
projection
and
introjection
so
crucial to Klein's theory of the paranoid-
schizoid
and depressive positions
and to Bion's theories of
thinking
. Although many of Bick's students have used
some of her ideas in clinical work, only Meltzer (
1975
;
Meltzer et al.,
1975
), Tustin (
1972
,
1981
,
1990
), and Ogden (
1990
) have attempted to
incorporate her ideas into their conceptual system.
The Positions and the Concept of Pathological Organization
The
depressive position
has continued to be a central
conception
, though
changes have occurred in ideas about it, sometimes through careful clinical
and conceptual analysis (
Steiner, 1992
) and sometimes without people
realizing they were occurring. In her own descriptions Klein stresses the
integration
of
part-objects
—
breast
, face, hands, voice, smell—to form the
whole object
; she also stresses the
integration
of the goodness and
badness
of
the
object
and of the
subject
's own love and hate. These features have been
retained, but use of the idea of the
depressive position
in the study of
borderline
, psychotic, and very envious patients has led to a gradual and
increasing emphasis on
recognition
of the
object
's separateness and
independence as another hallmark of the
depressive position
. (Recently
Quinodoz, 1991
, has written specifically on this topic and its connection with
loneliness.)
Studies of
thinking
and artistic endeavor have also shown the very close,
indeed, intrinsic relationship that exists between the
depressive position
,
symbolic
thought, and
creativity
(
Segal, 1952
,
1957
,
1974
,
1991
).
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A third aspect of the
depressive position
that has received even more
stress than Klein gave it is the intrinsic connection between the
Oedipus
complex
and the
depressive position
(
Britton, 1989
,
1992a
;
O'Shaughnessy,
1989
). As noted earlier, Klein herself drew
attention
to this connection; I
believe that the increased stress on the intrinsic nature of the connection
between the
Oedipus complex
and the
depressive position
has resulted from
recognition
of the
object
's separateness as a crucial aspect of the
depressive
position
. Once the other person is perceived to be separate, he or she is felt to
have a life that the
subject
does not control; a relationship with a third
object
is the essence of a
primary

object
's “other life.”
Further explorations of
psychosis
,
addiction
, sexual
perversion
, perverse
character

structure
, and especially studies of
narcissism
and
borderline
states,
have led to refinements in the understanding of the
paranoid-schizoid position
and the
relation
between the paranoid-
schizoid
and depressive positions.
Klein made a distinction between the normal
paranoid-schizoid position
(
1946
) and the pathological developments that occur when
primary
envy is
very strong (
1957
). Bion (
1962b
,
1963
) took this further, outlining, especially
in the
container
/
contained
model of
thinking
, the factors that can lead to
pathology in the
paranoid-schizoid position
. In his model he mentions two:
deficiencies in the
mother
's capacity for
reverie
, and overwhelming envy in
the infant. He implies that other factors in the hypothetical infant may be
involved, but envy is the only one he discusses. Gradually, the idea of an
“organization” of interlocking defenses has evolved to order the clinical
phenomena encountered, especially those involved in narcissistic and
borderline
states. Many authors have contributed to the
development
of the
concept, and the word “organization” has been in use for some time, first as
“defensive organization” (
Riviere, 1936
;
O'Shaughnessy 1981b
), also as
“narcissistic organization” (
Rosenfeld, 1971b
;
Sohn, 1985
), more recently as
“pathological organization” (
Steiner, 1982
,
1987
,
1992
). In addition, a great
many other analysts have used the idea without using the term (
Spillius,
1988
pp. 195-202); obviously they have influenced one another, though
evidently without
being
aware at the time of having a common theme.
There are two main strands of thought in the idea of the pathological
organization. The first is the dominance of a bad self over the rest
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of the
personality
; many authors point out a perverse, addictive element in this
bondage, indicating that it involves
sadomasochism
, not just
aggressiveness
.
The second strand is the idea of
development
of a structured pattern of
impulses, anxieties, and defenses that root the
personality
somewhere
between the paranoid-
schizoid
and depressive positions. This pattern allows
the individual to maintain a balance, precarious but strongly defended, in
which he is protected from the chaos of the
paranoid-schizoid position
, that
is, he does not become frankly psychotic, and yet he does not progress to a
point where he can confront and try to work through the problems of the
depressive position
with their intrinsic pain as well as their potential for
creativity
. There may be shifting about and even at times the appearance of
growth, but an organization of this sort is really profoundly resistant to
change. The defenses appear to work together to make a rigid system that does
not develop the flexibility characteristic of the defenses of the
depressive
position
, and efforts by the individual to make
reparation
, so characteristic of
the
depressive position
, are usually too narcissistic to bring lasting resolution.
There is considerable variation in the psychopathology of
pathological
organizations
, but the analyses of these patients tend to get stuck—to be very
long, only partially successful, or sometimes interminable. The various
authors are concerned with the question of whether the destructiveness of
these organizations is
primary
or defensive. Often it is both, and indeed it is
implicit in the work of many of the authors that the organizations they discuss
are compromise formations, that is, they are simultaneously expressions of
inherent destructiveness and systems of
defense
against it.
On Technique
Strong feelings are experienced about the
technique
as well as the ideas of
Klein and her colleagues. Analysts who are sympathetic to her point of view
find the
technique
rigorously psychoanalytic. Those who are unsympathetic
find it unempathically rigid.
Basic features of Klein's technique
. As Segal notes (
1967
), the basic
features of Kleinian
technique
are closely derived from Freud (
1911-1915
):
rigorous maintenance of the psychoanalytic setting to keep the
transference
as
pure and uncontaminated as possible; an expectation of sessions five times a
week; emphasis on the
transference
as the
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central focus of analyst-patient interaction; a belief that the
transference
situation is active from the very beginning of the analysis; an attitude of active
receptivity rather than
passivity
and silence; emphasis on
interpretation
,
especially the
transference

interpretation
, as the agent of therapeutic change;
interpretation
of
anxiety
and
defense
together rather than either on its own.
There is also an emphasis on the totality of
transference
. The concept is wider
than the expression in the session toward the analyst of attitudes toward
specific persons and incidents of the historical past. Rather the term is used to
mean the expression in the analytic situation of the forces and relationships of
the
internal world
. The
internal world
itself is regarded as the result of an
ongoing process of
development
, the product of continuing interaction
between
unconscious phantasy
, defenses, and experiences with external
reality
both in the past and in the present. The emphasis of Klein and her
successors on the pervasiveness of
transference
is derived from Klein's use of
the concept of
unconscious phantasy
. She conceives of
unconscious phantasy
as underlying all thought, rational as well as irrational, rather than
categorizing thought and feeling into that which is rational and appropriate
and therefore does not need analyzing and that which is irrational and
unreasonable and therefore is expressed in
transference
and needs analyzing.
Klein and her successors believe that when patients regress, analytic care
should continue to take the form of a stable analytic setting
containing
a
correct interpretive process; the analyst should not attempt to recreate or alter
infantile experiences in the consulting room through noninterpretive activities.
Even in the
development
of
play technique
with children Klein adhered to
these principles, except that play as well as talk was the medium of
expression. Similarly, in work with psychotic patients, some changes
enforced by the patient have been
contained
without loss of overall method.
Developments in technique
. Changes of emphasis have taken place in
Kleinian
technique
in the last 30 years or so, partly because it is part of a
psychoanalytic
society
in which there are other points of view, and partly
because of constant exploration by practitioners who are prepared to discard
existing accepted procedure. Developments in
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technique
and in ideas have gone along together, each influencing the other.
Most changes have developed piecemeal and without anyone
being
very much
aware of them at the time; they have been “in the air” rather than the product
of
conscious
striving.
1.
Changes in the interpretation of destructiveness
. Klein and her
colleagues have often been accused of overemphasizing the negative.
Certainly Klein was very much aware of destructiveness and of the
anxiety
it arouses, one of her earliest areas of research, but she also
stressed, both in theory and practice, the importance of love, of the
patient's
concern
for his objects, of
guilt
, and of
reparation
. In her
later work especially, she conveys a strong feeling of support to the
patient when negative feelings were
being
uncovered; this is
especially clear in
Envy and Gratitude
(
1957
). It is my impression
that she was experienced by her patients not as an adversary but as
an ally in their struggles to accept feelings they hated in themselves
and were therefore trying to deny and obliterate. I think it is this
attitude that gave the feeling of “balance” that Segal (
1982
) says was
so important in her experience of Klein as an analyst. Certainly that
sort of balance is something that present Kleinian analysts are
consciously striving for. In this respect some of the authors of early
clinical papers in the 1950s and 1960s (many of these papers were
given to the British
Society
but not published) took a step backward
from the work of Klein herself, especially from her later work. This
was also a period when stated “belief in the
death

instinct
” was
tacitly used, in my opinion, as a sort of banner differentiating
Kleinians from the other
groups
of the British
Society
. (Perhaps
other
groups
used their opposition to the idea of the
death

instinct
in
similar fashion.) Since that time there has been a change, not in the
emphasis on destructiveness and self-destructiveness, which have
continued to be considered of central importance both clinically and
theoretically, but in the way they are analyzed, with less
confrontation
and more awareness of subtleties of
conflict
among
different parts of the
personality
over them. This change has been
influenced not only by Bion's work but also by Rosenfeld's continued
stress on the communicative aspect of
projective identification
and
by Joseph's emphasis on the need for the analyst to become aware of
subtleties of the patient's internal
conflict
over destructiveness to
avoid joining the patient in sadomasochistic
acting out
.
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Although the actual term “
death

instinct
” is now probably used
less frequently than it was 30 years ago, there is basic agreement on
its importance. There are two ideas, not mutually exclusive. One is
that individuals with a particularly strong tendency toward inherent
destructiveness and self-destructiveness tend to attack or to turn
away from potentially life-giving relationships, wishing to oblate
any awareness of
desire
that would impinge on their static and
apparently self-sufficient state. Another idea, closely related,
emphasizes what Rosenfeld, following Freud, calls “the silent pull
of the
death

instinct
,” which promises a
nirvana
-like state of freedom
from
desire
, disturbance, and
dependence
(
Rosenfeld, 1987
). Both
Joseph and Segal also stress the
conflict
among different parts of the
personality
over the voluptuous lure of withdrawing into despair,
masochism
, and
perversion
.
There are differences in the extent to which analysts believe that
marked tendencies to attack positive relationships, to withdraw into
self-sufficiency, or both are innate or acquired, inherent or
defensive. In my view this is a false opposition. From the
perspective of treating a particular patient, I think it is impossible to
tell what is innate, what has been acquired through interaction with
others, and what is the continuing product of that interaction. What
one
can
tell is how deep-rooted the patient's negative tendencies are
in the present analytic situation, but this does not reveal whether the
deep-rootedness is innate or acquired. And, of course, it is part of
the analyst's job to tease out how much his or her own
behavior
may
exacerbate the patient's negative tendencies. It is equally important
for the analyst to avoid an attitude of blame—blame of the patient,
the patient's innate tendencies, the patient's
primary
objects—for an
attitude of blame, whatever its target, disturbs the analyst's active but
impartial curiosity.
2.
The language of interpretation
. Klein developed her very concrete,
vivid
language
of part objects and bodily functions in work with
small children for whom it was meaningful and appropriate.
Extrapolating backward, she assumed that infants feel and think in
the same way, and, further, that this is the
language
of
thinking
and
feeling in everyone's
unconscious
. Work since Klein's day has amply
demonstrated that vivid bodily based phantasies often become
conscious
in
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the analysis of adults, especially readily in psychotic and
borderline
patients. No one who has read Klein's accounts of her
work with children or the clinical reports of her more talented
students and colleagues can fail to be impressed by their clinical
imagination
and their grasp of
unconscious phantasy
. (There are
several examples in this issue.) In less skilled hands, however, this
approach loses its freshness and becomes routinized. Some of her
more youthful and enthusiastic followers made and still sometimes
make interpretations of verbal and behavioral content seen in a
rigidly
symbolic
form, which now seems likely to be detrimental to
the
recognition
of alive moments of emotional contact. Such
interpretations are based not on the analyst's receptiveness to the
patient but on the analyst's wish to find in the patient's
material
evidence for the analyst's already—formed conceptions.
Memory
and desire
, in Bion's (
1967b
) terms, replace hypothesis and
receptivity. This prejudiced attitude can of course operate with any
set of analytic concepts.
A number of analysts, perhaps especially
Donald Meltzer
, find it
appropriate to interpret
unconscious phantasy
directly in
part-object
bodily
language
, but the general tendency now is to talk to the
patient, especially the nonpsychotic patient, less in terms of
anatomical structures (e.g.,
breast
, penis) and more in terms of
psychological functions (e.g., seeing, hearing,
thinking
, evacuating).
Together with the increasing emphasis on function, concentration on
the patient's immediate experience in the
transference
often leads to
discovery of deeper layers of meaning, some of which may be seen
to be based on infantile bodily experience. Talking about
unconscious phantasy
in bodily and
part-object
terms too soon is
likely to lead to analyst and patient talking about the patient as if the
patient were a third person (
Joseph, 1989
;
Riesenberg Malcolm,
1981
). But there is a danger also that if the analyst concentrates too
exclusively on the immediate present, the here and now, he or she
will lose sight of the infantile levels of experience and
phantasy
that
expression in the here and now is based on, that the baby will get
thrown out with the bath water, so to speak. Both levels of
expression need to be listened for together and linked with
experience. Indeed, several colleagues have said that they think the
concepts of the inner world and
unconscious phantasy
are getting so
attenuated that much of the clinical richness of
Melanie Klein
's
approach is in danger of
being
lost.
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Transference, countertransference, and projective
identification
.
Transference
is now regarded as based on
projective
identification
, using that term in the widest sense as I have suggested
earlier. According to Segal, Klein frequently used the concept of
projective identification
in her own work, but phrased her
interpretations about it as statements about the patient's wishes,
perceptions, and defenses. Her emphasis was primarily on the
patient's
material
, not on the analyst's feelings, which, she thought,
were only aroused in a way that interfered with the analytic work if
the analyst was not functioning properly. This is illustrated in the
now-classic story about a young analyst who told Klein he felt
confused and therefore interpreted to his patient that the patient had
projected confusion into him, to which Klein replied, “No, dear, you
are
confused” (
Segal, 1982
). This example, however, is a case of a
wrong or inadequate use of the idea of
projective identification
; the
analyst was not seeing his own problem, and was blaming his own
deficiencies on the patient. Bion, however, made use of exactly the
same process, but with an accurate grasp of the way his patients
were attempting to arouse in him feelings that they could not tolerate
in themselves but that they unconsciously wished to express, and
which could be understood by the analyst as
communication
. Bion,
Rosenfeld, and now many other colleagues are explicitly prepared to
use their own feelings as a source of information about the patient.
Klein was uneasy not only about possible misuse of the concept
of
projective identification
but also about the closely related issue of
widening the concept of
countertransference
, as described by
Heimann (
1950
), to mean use of the analyst's feelings as a source of
information about the patient. She was very much aware of a
tendency among analysts, especially in inexperienced ones
attempting to use their feelings constructively, to become
preoccupied with monitoring their own feelings and to use them as
their
primary
clues in the session, to the detriment of direct contact
with their patient's
material
. Nearly all Kleinian analysts, however,
now use the concept of
countertransference
in the wider sense, that
is, as a state of mind at least partly induced in the analyst by verbal
and nonverbal actions of the patient, thus giving effect to the patient's
phantasy
of
projective identification
. (See
Spillius, 1988
pp. 11-13.)
As Money-Kyrle (
1956
) says: “The analyst experiences the
affect
as
being
his own response to
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something. The effort involved is in differentiating the patient's
contribution from his own” (p. 32; see also
Sandler, 1976b
p. 46
).
Bion uses the literal word “
countertransference
” in the restricted
sense to mean the analyst's
unconscious
pathological feelings, his or
her
transference
toward the patient, which indicates a need for more
analysis for the analyst. This is of course confusing, since Bion
constantly uses the
idea
of
countertransference
in the widened sense;
it is only when he uses the actual term that he means
countertransference
in the more restricted pathology-in-the-analyst
sense. In practice, however, the two types of
countertransference
are
not invariably separable, since arousing the pathology-in-the-analyst
is often the means by which the patient effects his
projective
identification
.
It has become increasingly apparent that far more is involved in
transference
and
countertransference
than explicit verbal
communication
, that there is a constant nonverbal interaction,
sometimes gross, sometimes very subtle, in which the patient acts on
the analyst's mind. Many analysts have discussed the importance of
what the patient does in contrast to the content of what he says, but
Joseph (
1989
) has particularly emphasized this contrast as a starting
point for her understanding of the way patients very early in their
lives and in the analytic situation adapt to their objects and attempt
to control them through
projective identification
. The patient is
constantly but unconsciously nudging the analyst to behave in
accordance with the patient's
unconscious
phantasies and
expectations, and her way of describing what Sandler calls
“actualization” (
1976a
;
Sandler and Sandler, 1978
).
Joseph's approach builds on and extends the usual psychoanalytic
view that the patient relives and repeats in the
transference
his
infantile experiences, his particular patterns of
anxiety
and
defense
,
and the conflicts between different parts of his
personality
. Her
method particularly stresses the
repetition
of infantile defenses—the
attempt to draw the analyst into
behavior
that will evade painful
emotional experiences by maintaining or restoring an age-old system
of
psychic equilibrium
.
Her method of work has aroused the interest of many analysts. All
agree on the importance of emotional contact, but many feel that one
can make more comprehensive, holistic interpretations and more
immediate links with the patient's
history
without losing emotional
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contact in the immediate analytic situation. Some feel the method
to be too limiting and restrictive, but no one doubts that Joseph has
developed a new and very important emphasis in Kleinian
technique
.
3.
Reconstruction in relation to the here and now.
In recent years there
has been much discussion among Kleinian analysts of the way past
experience emerges in the analytic situation, especially of whether
and when the patient's account of the historical past should be
explicitly linked with interpretations of
transference
and
countertransference
in the session. There is a considerable range of
views which do not fall into neatly demarcated sets.
Reconstruction
,
remembering
, and repeating have been considered
important ever since Freud first drew
attention
to them, but I think the
renewed interest in the topic of the past in the present has come about at least
partly because of the emphasis of Joseph and her colleagues on
acting-in
, that
is, on repeating as the central process that analysts should address themselves
to. The hope is that through thorough analysis of repeating,
remembering
will
occur—not only recalling forgotten historical events, but also making
conscious
anxieties, defenses, and
internal object
relationships that are
unconscious
.
According to one view, this is all that is necessary. If explicit links are to
be made with actual events of the past, which can in any case usually be
known only through the filter of the patient's projections, the patient will make
these links.
Reconstruction
by the analyst is both unnecessary and misleading,
for it is likely to distract the patient from the emotional impact of the session,
and it is in the session itself that the relevant aspects of the past are most
immediately experienced.
Many analysts, however, think that explicit
linking
with the historical past
is a crucial part of the
psychoanalytic process
that enriches its meaningfulness
and gives the patient a sense of the continuity of his or her experience
(
Brenman, 1980
). There is some disagreement over when and how explicit
linking
with the past should be done. There is one set of analysts who think
that although the first objective should be to clarify and make
conscious
the
past in the present through analysis of the patient's repeating, his
acting-in
, one
can then make links with the patient's current view of the historical past
(
Joseph, 1989
;
Riesenberg Malcolm, 1986
). Common to these authors is a
view that talk about the past is more distant than experience of the here and
now
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of the
transference
/
countertransference
situation, but all agree that it can be
extremely useful provided it is not used defensively.
Segal, however, does not agree that interpretations about the past are
necessarily more intellectual and distant than interpretations about the
immediate analyst-patient interaction (personal
communication
). In this she is
joined by Rosenfeld, who thinks that useful reconstructive interpretations and
observations can be brought in whenever they seem relevant, and are, indeed,
an essential
component
in the analysis of
transference
(
Rosenfeld, 1987
).
But in some of his later work Rosenfeld goes further. In the case of
traumatized patients he thinks that interpretations in the immediate
transference
/
countertransference
situation are likely to be positively harmful,
because the patient experiences them as the analyst repeating the
behavior
of a
self-centered
primary

object
, always demanding to be the center of the
patient's
attention
and
concern
(
Rosenfeld, 1986
). He thinks the analyst
should concentrate, at least initially, on a sympathetic elucidation of the
traumatic events of the past in all their ramifications. Critics of Rosenfeld's
view think that the problem of repeating the
behavior
of a self-centered parent
can be dealt with by
interpretation
rather than by behaving differently from the
parent, and are further concerned that concentrating mainly on elucidation of
past traumas may lead to
splitting
between an idealized analyst and denigrated
primary
objects, and to a belief by the analyst that he can know what the
external
reality
of the historical past actually was.
After many years of very little explicit discussion of technical issues, it
now seems likely that these and similar exchanges will lead to more and more
explicit statements of a growing range of views.
Personal Thoughts on Clinical Material and the Hypothetical
Infant
In the lectures Klein gave in England in 1925, which eventually became
Part 1 of
The Psycho-Analysis of Children
(
1932
), she reports detailed
clinical
material
, and such theory as she uses and develops is restricted to the
ideas she needs in order to make sense of her particular clinical observations.
In Part 2 of
The Psycho-Analysis of Children
, originally given as lectures in
1927, and in many of the more theoretical of her early papers, Klein writes
not about actual
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clinical
material
with children but about a hypothetical infant. She
extrapolates backward, assuming that infants think in much the same way as
the children she has analyzed and assuming that there is psychic continuity
from
infancy
—through early
childhood
,
latency
,
puberty
, and
adolescence
—to
adulthood. When discussing infants she does not bring much supporting
evidence from
infant observation
(but see
Klein, 1952c
), and indeed it is
often difficult to know how and why she arrives at her dating of phases.
In the
development
of her theory of the paranoid-
schizoid
and depressive
positions, her speculative theorizing about developments in
infancy
is carried
further. As described earlier, however, the positions are now increasingly
thought of as states of mind, with decreased emphasis on their place in a
conjectural sequence of infantile
development
. The positions cannot be
“proved” by clinical or experimental
infant observation
since they are
concerned with modes of
thinking
and feeling, and it is even more difficult to
gain
direct access to infantile
thinking
and feeling than to the
conscious
and
unconscious

thinking
and feeling of older children and adults.
In constructing a hypothetical infant, Klein is not alone. Freud, Abraham,
Winnicott, Mahler, indeed virtually all analysts are very free in constructing
hypothetical accounts of the mental
development
of infants. I believe that
these accounts are derived mainly from clinical work with patients, both adult
and
child
, supplemented by unsystematic observation of infants and general
reasoning and ideas of what is plausible. In other words, the theories are
derived from one set of data but expounded as if they were based on a
different set. It is as if the analyst had asked: “What reconstructed thoughts
and feelings of infants would be consistent with what I observe clinically and
with my thoughts about it?” Ideas about what is plausible are likely to be
strongly influenced by whatever theory of psychology is current at the time.
(In connection with the rival theories of the
Controversial Discussions
,
R.
Steiner, 1991
, presents a most interesting account of the various scientists
and authors who influenced the Viennese into believing that very young infants
could not phantasize and think and, in contrast, the thinkers and scientists who
influenced
Susan Isaacs
in the opposite direction.)
Coming from another discipline, which had already moved from a belief in
hypothetical phases to the view that theories should be
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designed to make sense of specific ethnographic facts, I found it surprising
that psychoanalysts of all schools of thought phrased so much of their theory
in terms of hypothetical conjectures about infant
development
when it seemed
obvious that these could not be directly investigated with infants. This
preoccupation with infantile thought was particularly striking in the
Controversial Discussions
; much of the scientific part of the controversy
consisted of arguments over highly speculative constructions of infantile
experience. I find Isaacs' (
1952
) paper plausible partly because she presented
considerable observational evidence and made good use of the idea of
genetic
continuity
, and partly, of course, because I am very familiar with her point of
view. But the real usefulness of Klein's concept of
phantasy
emerges not from
its conjectured role in infantile thought but in the meaningfulness and
enrichment it gives to clinical work with patients. The
relation
of concepts to
actual clinical data, however, was not the principal focus of the
Controversial
Discussions
.
I am not at all against making conjectural hypotheses—
psychoanalysis
would be immeasurably poorer if Freud, Abraham, Klein, and others had not
had the courage and
imagination
to do so. And it is hardly surprising that the
hypotheses should have taken the form of speculations about infant thought.
But trouble starts when such speculations are treated as fact. In the
Controversial Discussions
each side tended first to act as if what Freud said
must be a “correct” theory and then to shift to regarding it as fact. Since Freud
said many things, and each side hunted for statements that supported their own
point of view, it is hardly surprising that they did not come to any agreement,
or even to a better understanding of each other. Such emotional
attachment
to
conjectural theories puts one in danger of clinging to a theory that is not as
useful as it should be.
Freud (
1915
) describes the tentative attitude one should adopt towards
one's hypotheses in the first paragraph of “
Instincts
and their vicissitudes.”
Indeed it was one of the great strengths of both Freud and Klein that they were
prepared to drop one set of speculative hypotheses in favor of another that
fitted clinical
material
better or that made more sense of existing observations
and theory. This has been continued by Klein's colleagues, though on a
smaller scale, and with more
attention
to clinical work and less to phrasing
theory in terms of speculative reconstructions of
infancy
.
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–
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Meanwhile, in recent years there has been a vast increase in studies of
infancy
, both by psychoanalytic
baby observation
and by developmental
psychologists doing observation and experiments. And it is worth noting that
experimental research on very young infants has substantiated some of Klein's
more cognitive conjectures, especially her assumption that very young infants
are able to make rudimentary distinctions between self and
object
. As Stern
(
1985
) puts it:
Infants begin to experience a sense of an emergent self from birth.
They are predesigned to be aware of self-organizing
processes
.
They never experience a period of total self/other undifferentation.
There is no confusion between self and other in the beginning or at
any point during
infancy
. They are also predesigned to be
selectively responsive to external social events and never
experience an
autistic
-like
phase
[p. 10].
I find it interesting that Kleinian analysts have not drawn particular
attention
to this bit of confirmation; presumably this is because their interest has shifted
away so much from the hypothetical phases of
infancy
.
In my view the experiments and observations of developmental
psychologists are best at testing cognitive discriminations and sequences of
behavioral interaction. They are not, or not yet, so good at telling us about
infants'
thinking
and feeling and other such matters of special relevance to
psychoanalytic theory. Most of the concepts of developmental psychologists
are not formulated in a way that allows for discovery of such matters, and
perhaps such formulation is not possible. I surmise that this is why many
psychoanalysts (e.g.,
Green, 1990
) are only peripherally interested in the
experiments of developmental psychologists. My own view is that
psychoanalytic theory should at least be consistent with the findings of
developmental psychology, although it cannot be reduced to them, and that
developmental research would be enriched by making more use of
psychoanalytic concepts of
development
, however conjectural.
It seems to me that two new trends of psychoanalytic
thinking
have been
developing recently. Both depart from the highly conjectural theories of
infantile
development
and phases current at the time of the
Controversial
Discussions
. One trend is closely associated with
–
358
–
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(though not limited by) empirical developmental psychology; an example is
the observational and therapeutic study by George Moran and his colleagues
at the
Anna Freud
Centre of the
development
of the individual's
theory of
mind
(
Fonagy, 1991
). A second trend is the
development
of a theory of
mental models, and this is the trend of much recent Kleinian
thinking
.
Following the initiative of Bion, interest in the precise dating of the
paranoid-
schizoid
and depressive positions in
infancy
has ceased to be a
preoccupation. It is implicit in most papers that the author is
thinking
of the
positions as mental models if viewed from the analyst's perspective, or as
states of mind if viewed from the point of view of the patient's experience.
Change of emphasis from the infant-
development
aspect to the states-of-
mind aspect is much more pronounced in some analysts than others. Analysts
who have a particular talent for seeing the expression of infantile experience
in the analytic relationship are more likely to think within the
infant-
development
framework and to use reconstructive interpretations.
Analysts who stay more explicitly in the here and now are more likely to use
the positions as current and fluctuating states of mind. But overall, compared
to the
thinking
and clinical practice of 30 or 40 years ago, it seems to me that
the general trend for both the reconstructive and the here-and-now analysts is
toward a greater use of the positions as models.
An Overview
Klein's early period, then, produced great work of empirical clinical
discovery, which included findings at variance with some of Freud's views
and findings. Then came her later period of theory building with its
delineation of the paranoid-
schizoid
and depressive positions, a new
understanding of
anxiety
, and new ideas about the importance of envy and
gratitude
in
primary
experiences of
object relations
.
I have described some central developments in Kleinian thought in recent
years: studies of
psychosis
; theories of
thinking
and experiencing;
projective
identification
and
countertransference
, together with developments in
technique
; and refinements in the
conception
of the paranoid-
schizoid
and
depressive positions and use of these conceptions as models.
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–
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Looking at the Kleinian
development
overall, two features stand out for
me. First, in theoretical orientation it is both an
object
-relations and a
drive
–
structure
theory. Second, for clinicians, it is an approach that has
special regard for
psychic reality
and for the individual's need to “know” in
Bion's sense and sometimes to evade “knowing.” There are now many
variations of Kleinian
thinking
, but all seem to me to have in common an
interest in exploring the roots of current
object relations
in the
internal world
and in the remembered past experience of the individual, and all are involved
in studying the expression of archaic
object relations
in modified forms in the
relationship of analyst and patient.
Many times I have asked myself why have I became involved in such an
exacting discipline, with so much
anxiety
, so little certainty, so much need for
openness to things one does not understand, so much temptation to cling to
what one knows. But every now and then comes that sense of discovery I felt
more than 40 years ago on reading Klein's early clinical papers. I hope that
the papers of this issue will give the reader a feeling of that sense of
exploration and discovery as ot continues in a new generation.
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Copyright © 2017, Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing. All Rights Reserved. This download is only for the personal use of PEPWeb.

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Article Citation
[Who Cited This?]
Spillius, E.B.
(1994). Developments in Kleinian Thought: Overview and
Personal View.
Psychoanal. Inq.
, 14(3):324-364

Copyright © 2017, Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing. All Rights Reserved. This download is only for the personal use of PEPWeb.