1. Klein’s object relations theory of development and personality
Chapter 6
Klein’s object relations theory of development and personality

2. Features of the Kleinian approach
Goal was to understand the preverbal, precognitive world of the infant’s experience
Worked with very young children, to capture the significance of early infant (pre-oedipal) experiences
Developed the method of using play to gain access to the unconscious infant world
Play therapy is a central Kleinian technique

3. Some key Kleinian concepts, I
‘Phantasy’
Intra-psychic experiences of relations between good and bad experiences
The most primitive origins of thought, some even innate (e.g. images of the breast)
‘Object relations’
Infants cannot internally relate to real people, but relate to phantasy constructions (objects)
Some relations are to part objects - objects experienced in terms of their functions (e.g. relating to breast rather than mother)

4. Some key Kleinian concepts, II
‘Primary narcissism’ & ‘omnipotence’
In their first state, infants cannot differentiate internal and external realities
They are the world, and their experience is of unlimited power. They make everything happen
Experiences are ‘lived’ through the body
Only pleasures (good experiences) and (bad experiences) ‘unpleasures’ exist for the infant
Most of an infant’s psychic life are taken up with relations to these good and bad experiences
solipsism

5. Introjection and projection
Internalisation of the world through physiological body processes (e.g. eating)
Projection
The excretion or externalisation of bodily sensations (e.g. defecation)
The continual interplay between introjection and projection of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ build psychic structure

6. Life and death instincts
Klein endorsed Freud’s claims about life and death instincts
Prime motivators for anxieties that characterise internal object relations
Translated these concepts as love and aggression
Proposed that love and hate are the basis of our relational motivation
Death instinct is operative from birth
Infant defends against paranoid anxiety with schizoid mechanisms (splitting and projective defences)

7. Positions Klein used the concept of ‘positions’ rather than ‘stages’
To empasise that there is a continuous process that persists throughout life
Two positions
Paranoid schizoid (earlier)
Depressive (later)
Depressive position never fully overcomes paranoid position, may oscillate between them

8. Paranoid schizoid position
From birth to about 3 months
Bodily experiences (i.e. infant reality) are sensed as either good or bad
Bad experiences are taken as persecutory
Infant defends through splitting (good object from bad, protecting good object)
and projection
Successful operation of splitting defences leads to a stable psychic structure
But operaton of envy can undermine this

9. Depressive position Movement to whole object relating
e.g. knowledge that good and bad breast are one and the same
Operative anxiety changes from paranoid to depressive
Depression is about the guilt around the damage done to the good object
Attempts at reparation; where this is successful healthy development occurs
Unsuccessful attempts at reparation will lead to psychopathology

10. Good part object relations Phantasy
Omnipotence
Good part object relations
Phantasy
Bad part object relations
Projection and splitting
Envy, jealousy and greed
Paranoid anxieties

11. Whole object relations Damage Phantasy Guilt
Loss
Whole object relations
Damage
Phantasy Guilt
Reparation
Failure
Success Manic defence
Denial (damage, anxiety)
Depressive anxieties