Melanie Klein - Psychoanalysis

Who was Melanie Klein?

One of the first major female figures in the field of psychoanalysis, her speciality was children's therapies. Klein was influential in the establishment of the British Object Relations School.

Object Relations Theory

Klein argued that ego exists from birth, placing importance upon the interaction between infants and their caregivers. Klein suggested that infants view people as 'objects' that are split into 'good' or 'bad.' This is a primal instinct that is essential to an infants survival.

Part Objects

Experiencing people and things as fragmented parts, either all 'good' or all 'bad.' (e.g. just the breast, not the whole mother).

Paranoid-Schizoid Position

Infants split their experiences into all 'good' or all 'bad.' This is a survival mechanism.

Depressive Position

When the infant realises that part objects and whole objects can coexist. A recognition that a single person can be both 'good' and 'bad.'

Projective Identification

Pushing a feeling into someone else so they can feel it on their behalf. This is an unconscious process that is necessary for an infants needs to be met.

Symbolic Equation

A mental state where an object is treated as if it is the symbol it represents. For example, a child using a banana as a telephone (symbolic equation) versus a child knowing the banana is symbolic of a telephone.

Play Technique

Play is considered the child's primary language, replacing adult free association, allowing access to their unconscious mind and fantasies.

How did Klein view the importance of toys to a child?

Klein suggested that toys and imaginative scenarios display children's deeper emotional conflicts and their relationships with significant figures (e.g. parents).

What was Klein's view on envy, jealousy, and greed?

Klein viewed envy, jealousy, and greed as fundamental, yet destructive, emotions that originate in infancy as a result of the infant's relationship with the mothers breast.

Envy

An angry impulse to spoil or destroy what another person has. Originates between the infant and the breast.

Jealousy

Based on envy but involves love and a third person. A fear of losing a loved object to someone else and the desire to protect it.

Greed

An insatiable, destructive urge to possess and devour the good object beyond it's means of giving.

Unconscious Phantasies

The mental processes behind instinctual bodily sensations and drives. Phantasies link internal feelings (e.g. hunger) to external objects (e.g. mother's breast).