MELANIE

KLEIN
——
Role of phantasy, Position,
Splitting, Introjection,
Projective identification
 CONTENTS

Biography
01. Early life of Melanie Klein

Concept of phantasy
02.
Concept of position
03. Paranoid schizoid position
 CONTENTS

Object relation theory

04.
Defense mechanisms
05. Splitting
Introjection
Projective identification

06. Depressive position

Melanie Klein

• Melanie Klein was born in Vienna on 1882

• She is known as the mother of psychoanalysis

• She went through lot of family tragedies including the death if two of her
siblings.

• She was neglected by her father and kept a cold and distant relation with him.

• Later her father ’s deterioration and death may have been at least partly
responsible for Melanie agreeing, at the age of 19, to marry Arthur Klein.But it
was an unhappy marriage

• Influence of Sandor Ferenzi encouraged her interest in Psychoanalysis and

Freud's ideas.

• The Kleins moved to Berlin in 1921 and Melanie Klein, by then aged thirty-
eight, joined the nascent Berlin Psychoanalytical Society. With the
encouragement and interest of Karl Abraham, she began to analyse young
children.
• Her major papers are: On the development of the child (1934), A contribution to the
Psychogenesis of the Maniac Depressive States (1934), Notes on some Schizoid Mechanisms
( 1946)

• Melanie Klein in person :

• Strong and forceful personality

• Very insecure and anxious person

• Very tough

• Someone you didn't contradict

• Outspoken and doctrinaire

• House wife with fantasies

• A women of character, and force.... Something working underground, menacing, bluff grey
haired lady with large bright imaginative eyes.
• Melanie Klein's contributions to psychoanalysis includes

• Role of phantasy

• Positions: paranoid schizoid position and infantile depressive position

• Object relation theory

• Splitting

• Introjection

• Projective identification
Phantasy
• Psychic representation of Id instincts.

• A child has an active phantasy life from the time he is born where phantasy is the psychic
representation of the unconscious id instincts

• Unonscious images of what is good as opposed to what is bad.

• Constructed by the child through external reality which is further modified by the existing
knowledge and beliefs

• Due to the Unconscious nature of the phantasies, it is also possible that there arises a
contradiction between the two phantasies.

• On maturity, these unconscious phantasies about the breast continue exerting their influence on
the psychic life of the child along with other phantasies that emerge later on.

• Oedipus complex is also one of the unconscious phantasies to emerge later.

Concept of Position
• Positions are the basic developmental orientations

• Klein explained two positions

• Paranoid Schizoid Position

• Infantile Depressive Position

• Position is a set of psychic functions thats corresponds to a given phase of development.

• Klein’s idea of ‘positions’ differed from Freud’s ‘stages’ in that she did not think we grow out of
them. She felt that there was a continuous tension between paranoid-schizoid mechanisms and
depressive mechanisms. People constantly move from one to the other and back again.
Throughout life the paranoid-schizoid mechanisms and phantasies are available and are likely
to be used when under any kind of stress.

• It helps the child to reconcile its emotions and feelings regarding the inner and outer world in
which the child exits.

• She described the paranoid-schizoid position and the depressive position as different ways of
dealing with anxiety
Paranoid Schizoid Position

• The first three or four months of life.

• Rooted in primal phantasy

• The term ‘paranoid-schizoid position’ refers to a constellation of anxieties, defences and

internal and external object relations that Klein considers to be characteristic of the earliest
months of an infant’s life and to continue to a greater or lesser extent into childhood and
adulthood.

• During this phase, the infant experiences the fear of annihilation, persecutory anxiety,

• The primary cause for persecutory anxiety can be found in the experience of birth which
includes;

• Pain, discomfort, loss of intra-uterine state.

• The persecutory anxiety enters from the beginning into infant's relation to objects is so far as
the infant is exposed to privations.

• The chief characteristic of the paranoid-schizoid position is the object relation theory and the
attempts to deal with experiences, particularly anxiety, by using phantasies of splitting,
projective identification and introjection.
Object Relation Theory
• Basic concept of Klein's paranoid schizoid position

• It begins with the complex feeding process between infant and mother.

• Infant's primary object is the Mother's Breast.

• Bothe the Oral -libidinal and oral -destructive impulses from the beginning of life are directed
towards the mother's breast.

• Consider the object breast,

• The breast, in as much as it is gratifying, is loved and felt to be good. Breast.

• And as a source of frustration, it is hated and felt to be Bad breast.

• Klein's object -relation theory is slightly different from that of Freud's. Freud emphasized on the
sexual nature of the breast feeding. Klein focused on the emotional and psychological force
behind the infant - mother relationship.
• Here the object ( breast ) is a psychological force that is drawing the child towards mother and
learning certain aspects of her personality and to adapt them to the child's own psyche. And it
can be later used to form adult relationship later in it's social life.

• It places less emphasis on biologically based drives and more importance on consistent pattern
of interpersonal relationship.

• Klein's Object relation theory tends to be more maternal in nature, stressing on intimacy and
nurturing of the mother. Where Freud's is paternal in nature.

• Object relation theory generally see human contact and relatedness as prime motives of
human behavior.
• Against the overwhelming anxiety of annihilation, and persecution after the birth, the ego
evolves a series of mechanisms of defense, a defensive use of splitting, introjection, and
projective identification.. The ego strives to introject the good and to project the bad.

• But there are situations in which good is projected, inorder to keep it safe from what is felt to be
overwhelming badness inside and situations in which persecutors are introjected and even
identified with in an attempt to gain control over them.
Defense mechanisms

Splitting

• Splitting typically refers to an immature defense whereby polarized views of self and others
arise due to intolerable conflicting emotions.

• Splitting is the central part of Klein's object relation theory

• It's the mental separation of objects into good and bad parts and subsequent repression of
bad or anxiety provoking aspects.

• Infants first experience of splitting is with their primary care giver. The caregiver (mother
/breast) is good when all the infant's needs are satisfied and bad when they are not.

• That is, the infants in its phantasy, splits mother's breast into the good breast and bad breast.
Introjection
• It is the process in which an individual unconsciously incorporates aspects of external reality
into the self, particularly the attitudes, values, and qualities of another person or a part of
another person’s personality. Introjection may occur, for example, in the mourning process for a
loved one.

• In psychoanalytic theory, the process of absorbing the qualities of an external object into the
psyche in the form of an internal object or mental representation (i.e., an introject), which then
has an influence on behavior.

• By introjection a good breast and bad breast are established inside the infant's mind.

• The infant introjects the object (breast) literally by swallowing and nourishing the milk as
symbol of love and life., and also by experiencing hunger pains and its own aggressive anger
against the withholding bad breast inside the body.

• The infants take in most of the experiences and perceptions that they had with the external
object, originally the mother's breast.
Projective identification
• Projection : Its the phantasy that One's own feelings and impulses actually reside in another
person and not within one's body. And by projecting unmanageable destructive impulses onto
external objects, infants moderate the unbearable anxiety of beings persecuted and destroyed.

• Its allows the people to believe that their own subjective opinions are true.

• Freud States projection as a mechanism by which neurotic and moral anxiety is converted into
an objective fear. It reduces anxiety by substituting a lesser danger for greater one. Eg "she
hates me"instead of "I hate her".

• In Klein's theory, the infants projects its love impulses and attributes them to the gratifying
good breast, just as it projects its destructive impulses outwards and attributes them to the
frustrating bad breast.

• Projective identification : projective identification takes the projection one stage further.

• It's a psychic defense mechanism in which infants split off unacceptable parts of themselves,
projects them back into themselves in a changed or distorted form.

• Projective identification : involves Ssplitting,Projection, identification.

• Processs of projective identification involves,

1. Splitting the destructive impulses

2. Projecting it on to the external object ( bad breast)

3. Introjecting the object in a modified form.

Infantile depressive position
• Second developmental phase begin s at about 5th or 6th month.

• Followed by paranoid schizoid position

• Changes in intellectual and emotional development

• Gradual development in ego can be observed

• Infant recognize mother as a whole other than object.

• Recognize other people in the environment.

• Lessening of projective processes and integration of the ego indicates that the perception of objects
is less distorted

• Maturation of ego and central nervous system.

• Better organization of perception and development of organization of memory.

• The range of gratification and interests widens

• Power of expressing emotions and communication increases.

• Infant's sexual organization also develops.

• Confluence of different sources of libido and aggression.

• Changes in range phantasies, they become more elaborated and differentiated.

• Changes in the nature of defences.

Questions
• 1 According to Klein, _____ is the process through which children might cast their thoughts and
feelings onto another person.

• a. Introjection

• b. Projection

• c. Splitting

• d. Displacement

• 2 What were the two developmental "positions" that Klein posited?

• a. Oral stage

• b. Paranoid schizoid position and infantile maniac depressive position

• c. Anal and phallic stage

• d. Genital stage and anal stage.

• 3 Who introduced child psychoanalysis for the first time?

• a. Anna Freud'

• b. Sigmund Freud

• c. Melanie Klein

• d. Karen Horney

• 4 Klein suggested that the infant's first model for interpersonal relations was

• a. Mother's breast

• b. Father's penis

• c. Brother

• d. An imaginary play mate

• 5 The person or part of a person that satisfies the aim of an instinct is called

• a. The impetus

• b. The object

• c. The source

• d. The unconscious motivator

• 6 The psychic representation of unconscious id instincts Present at the time of birth

• a. Phantasy

• b. Dream

• c. Superego

• d. Position
• 7 The intellectual and emotional development can be observed in which developmental phase?

• a. Paranoid schizoid position

• b. Depressive position

• c. Anal stage

• d. Pre operational stage

• 8 Who introduced play technique in child psychoanalysis

• a. Carl jung

• b. Melanie Klein

• c. Sigmund Freud

• d. Anna Freud
• 9 Defense mechanism occurs when child fails to keep two contradictory thoughts or feelings in
mind at the same time is

• a. Projection

• b.. Introjection

• c. Splitting

• d. Denial

• 10 The process of absorbing the qualities of an external object into psyche in the form of
mental representation is known as

• a. Introjection

• b. Projection

• c. Displacement

• d rationalization
Answers
• 1) Projection

• 2) Paranoid schizoid position and depressive position

• 3) Melanie Klein

• 4) Mother's breast

• 5) The object

• 6) Phantasy

• 7) Depressive position

• 8) Melanie Klein

• 9) Splitting

• 10) Interjection
References

Klein, M. (1932). The Psychoanalysis of Children.

The International Psycho-analytical Library.

Segal, H. (1973).Introduction to the work of Melanie Klein.

The hogarth Press.