Melanie Klein

Klein's object relations theory (1935, 1940, 1946) incorporates Freud's dual-drive theory and emphasizes the death instinct's fundamental antagonism. The death instinct and life instinct determine early ego and superego formation through influencing object connections from infancy. Unconscious fantasy symbolizes the self and objects impacted by basic emotions, reflecting both instincts. Verbal antagonism can lead to envy, avarice, and jealousy. The life instinct is shown through joyful encounters with attractive goods, especially the "wonderful breast," from infancy. These internal items are filled with desire and passion. Trust, curiosity, and learning come from projecting the positive inner object onto new objects. Gratitude drives libido.

\ The death instinct is expressed in envy and fears of persecution and destruction. To keep the ego pure, early stress and sadness are directed into persecuting objects. The ego develops anxiety defenses, introjection, projection, object interactions, integration, and synthesis from infancy. Birth separation and oral demands intensify anxiety, which is the ego's response to the death instinct.

\ Due to the introduction of hostility in the form of internalized negative objects, anxiety evolves into a fear of objects that cause persecution and, eventually, a fear of being persecuted both internally and externally. Basic superego anxiety is caused by inner persecutors. Paranoid fears are caused by the projection of uncomfortable internal states and unpleasant external stimuli, whereas the projection of pleasurable feelings, which essentially reflect the need to live, results in fundamental trust. Libido- or hostility-infused external impulses are turned into simple objects.

\ At all stages of psychosexual development, Klein identified two main constellations of defenses and object interactions that produce recurring polarities of human experience starting in the first year of life. She referred to these as the depressive and paranoid-schizoid positions. The paranoid-schizoid position, which represents the earliest developmental stage, is characterized by the predominance of splitting and other related mechanisms, by part-object relations, and by paranoid fears about the preservation or survival of the ego, which result from oral-sadistic and anal-sadistic impulses. An excessive fear of being persecuted can trigger pathological strengthening and fixation, which can result in schizophrenia and paranoid psychosis.

\ Depression dominates the second half of the first year. Splitting processes decrease as the newborn realizes that the positive and bad outside components are one and that mother as a whole has both good and harmful qualities. Projection decreases as the newborn realizes it was attacking the beneficial object it thought was harmful. Unlike the paranoid-schizoid stance, the depressive position concerns about damaging good internal and external items. Depression is driven by guilt, or depressed anxiety. Beautiful things are more important than self-preservation. The basic superego, composed of internal negative objects no longer projected, guilts the ego. Bad internal objects that have internalized into the superego due to their demanding or standard-setting nature may contaminate outstanding internal objects, resulting in harsh perfectionist demands.

\ Normal conditions allow the depressive posture to be worked through by becoming aware of and enduring love and hatred toward the same item, with love predominating over hate in emotional reactions to entire objects, and ambivalence, which is thankfulness strengthened by shame. Klein states that normal sorrow always involves guilt, reactivating the guilt of the depressive stance, and the introjection of both the lost external item and the interior good object that was seen to be in danger. It can also involve euphoric triumph and secondary remorse at being alive.

\ According to Kleinian theory, the ego and the early superego are both formed up of internalized object relations. All conflict-laden situations and developmental phases generate paranoid-schizoid and depressed object relations and defenses; a fundamental aspect of Kleinian approach is the complete exploration of these mechanisms in transference (Segal, 1967). (Segal, 1967).

Klein (1945) believed the oedipal complex activates late in the first year. She believed these early oedipal developments were caused by mother-to-father paranoid-schizoid and depressive postures. Transfer of oral dependency from mother to father dominates the early positive Oedipus complex in girls and the early negative Oedipus complex in boys; transfer of aggressive fears and fantasies from mother to father results in fantasies of dangerous sexual organs and destructive parental sexual relations. Early castration anxiety in both sexes is colored by the projection of oral and anal harsh fantasies onto the genitals. Mother's oral envy causes penis envy in girls and oedipal jealousy and competition in both sexes.

\ The potential for proper oedipal identifications and development, as well as the capacity for good sexual interactions, are governed by the transmission of good object relations to the oedipal object and the fantasy sexual relations of the parents. The profound penetration of fantasies about the primordial scene and interactions with both parents generates significant oedipal inhibitions and conflicts.

Kleinian approach also emphasizes transference analysis from the start of treatment and the in-depth investigation of transference developments to their dominant and frequently primordial anxiety levels. However, modern Kleinian practice stresses the examination of unconscious meanings in the "now and now" and takes a more slow and cautious approach to genetic reconstructions. Segal (1981), Rosenfeld (1987), and Spillius and Feldman (1987) reflect mainstream (1989).

Kleinian technique. In light of Kleinian innovations, Bion (1967b, 1970) and Meltzer (1973; Meltzer et al., 1975; Meltzer and Williams, 1988) have constructed what can be described as more radical adaptations of traditional psychoanalysis.

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