Women's Voices in Psychodynamic Theory - Melanie Klein PDF

Women’s Voices in Psychodynamic Theory: Melanie Klein and Object-Relations Theory MODULE 4 Critiques and Theoretical Expansions for Women Psychoanalysts  Freud and his colleagues in the psychoanalytic movement were involved in training several women psychoanalysts  Many of the women psy...

Women’s Voices in Psychodynamic Theory: Melanie Klein and Object-Relations Theory MODULE 4 Critiques and Theoretical Expansions for Women Psychoanalysts  Freud and his colleagues in the psychoanalytic movement were involved in training several women psychoanalysts  Many of the women psychoanalysts in from the 20th century reacted to the “patriarchal,” or what they argued were overtly sexist, concepts in Freudian theory and they extended psychodynamic thinking in new and influential directions:  Critiques of Freud’s focus on the power of the father or father figures  A greater emphasis on very early childhood and the important role of the mother (caregiver)-child relationship to personality  More emphasis on observing and collecting data from children to support their theories and approaches  Less focus on biology and anatomical differences between men and women  A greater focus on interpersonal relationships and the role of social and cultural experiences Brief Biography of Melanie Klein  Born in Vienna in 1882, she was the youngest of four children  Her father was a medical doctor, and her mother was his second wife  Important childhood events and experiences:  She believed her birth was unplanned and felt rejected by her parents  By 20 she had lost two siblings (a sister and a brother) who she loved deeply, as well as her father  Trained in psychoanalysis by a member of Freud’s inner circle (Sandor Ferenczi)  Tried to extend psychoanalysis through working with young children and established object-relations theory  Considered herself Freudian, but diverged from his work so that engaging with the Vienna society became difficult  Moved to England in 1927 and stayed there to her death  All her children engaged in psychoanalysis with her  Her daughter Melitta eventually became a psychoanalyst, but they had a difficult and eventually estranged relationship Discussion  Did you have a special stuffed animal, doll, toy or blanket when you were a kid?  If so, why do you think this was important?  What do you think these “special objects” do for children  Object Relations Theories and Freud’s Theory of Instincts  In an attempt to further Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, Klein developed a distinct theoretical approach to personality and psychotherapy that has been called Object Relations Theory  After Klein, several other psychologists built on her ideas and developed a unique form of psychoanalysis called Object-Relations involving both new theoretical concepts and new therapeutic techniques  Object relations theories show at least three key differences from Freud’s theory 1) Less emphasis on biologically based drives and more importance placed on consistent patterns of interpersonal relationships 2) Less paternalistic, as opposed to Freud’s theory emphasizing the power and control of the father, these approaches tend to focus on the role of the mother and “maternal” characteristics like intimacy and nurturing 3) Object relations theories generally propose human contact and relatedness as the prime motive of human behaviour as opposed to sexual pleasure Klein’s Definition of Objects  The term object-relations means different things to different theorists  For Freud’ the term object refers to the person or part of a person that can satisfy an instinct or drive  Klein starts with a similar assumption to Freud and focuses on how an infant’s real or phantasized relationship with an object (e.g., mother, or more specifically the breast) becomes a model for later interpersonal relationships  An important part of any relationship is the internal psychic representations of early significant objects and partial objects (e.g., mother’s breast or father’s penis)  These objects (and the infant’s relations with them) are introjected, or taken into the infant’s psychic structure, and projected onto other relationship partners  Internal representations of objects are not accurate representations; they are remnants of early (preverbal) experiences with the object.  These internal representations are influential in how children and adults understand and experience later interpersonal relationships The Psychic Life of the Infant for Melanie Klein  Kline’s theory of personality emphasizes the importance of the first 4 to 6 months of an infant’s life  She suggests that infants begin life with an inherited predisposition to reduce the anxiety they experience due to the conflict between the forces of the life instinct and the power of the death instinct  To support this view, she pointed to early tendencies to act or react among infants, and suggested this predisposes the existence of a phylogenetic endowment  This phylogenetic endowment provides infants with an active phantasy life from the time of their birth  Phantasies are psychic representations of unconscious id instincts (different than conscious fantasies of adults)  Infants cannot put these phantasies into words, they are unconscious images of basic qualities like “good” and “bad,” and they include contradictions (e.g., Mom can be both “good” and “bad”)  Klein agreed that humans have innate drives and instincts, and she suggested these basic drives have objects (the hunger drive has the “good breast” as its object)  From early infancy children build internalized relationships with these external objects  In their active fantasy, children introject, or take into their psychic structure, these external objects, which then have their own “power” to influence the child’s ego development  Klein’s concept of Positions  In their attempts to deal with “good” and “bad” feelings infants organize their experience into positions, or typical ways of dealing with both internal and external objects  Paranoid-schizoid position: Organizing experiences in a way that includes both feelings of persecution and splitting of internal and external objects into the good and the bad.  Early experiences of frustration and gratification threaten the developing ego  In defense, the ego splits, deflecting parts of the life and death instincts onto early objects (e.g., the breast) so the object is seen as either “good” or “bad”  This preverbal splitting of the world into good and bad serves as a prototype for the development of ambivalent feelings to a single person  Depressive position: Includes both anxiety over losing a loved object and a sense of guilt for wanting to destroy the loved object.  At around 5 or 6 months infants begin to see objects as whole; and they can see that good and bad exist in the same person  At this point they also begin to realize that the mother might go away and be lost forever  They now see the loved object and hated object as one and the same and feel guilty for previous destructive urges, this leads to the beginnings of empathy  When this conflict is resolved children close the split between good and bad mother, they are then able to experience love from the mother and give love to her Defense Mechanisms for Melanie Klein  Klein suggested that from very early infancy children adopt several psychic defense mechanisms to protect their ego against anxiety from their destructive phantasies  Introjection: phantasizing taking external objects such as the mother’s breast into their own body  Most often infants try to introject good objects, but they can introject bad objects, which can become persecutors terrifying the infant  Projection: the phantasy that one’s own feelings and impulses actually reside within another person  Projecting unmanageable destructive impulses on external objects defends the infant from the anxiety caused by dangerous internal forces  Splitting: subjectively separating good and bad, or incompatible aspects of an object  Involves a splitting of the ego into the “good me” and the “bad me”  If it’s not extreme and ridged splitting can be useful, if too rigid the “bad me” can be repressed  Projective identification: infants split off unacceptable parts of themselves, project them onto another object, and then introject them in a distorted form.  Can play an important role in adult interpersonal relationships The Ego and Superego for Melanie Klein  For Klein, the ego and superego develop through internalizations where aspects of the external world are taken in (introjected) and then organized internally into a psychologically meaningful framework.  Ego  Mostly unorganized at birth, but strong enough to sense loving and destructive forces and form early object relations  Begins to evolve with the infants first experience of feeding, where the “good” breast provides food, love and security  Images of the good or bad breast provide focal points for the expansion of the ego and prototypes for experiences with other objects  As infants mature their ego becomes less split and more integrated, and they no longer see the world in partial (good or bad) objects  Superego  Emerges early in life and more harsh than Freud’s view,  Produces feelings of terror in the child in their phantasies that are greatly out of proportion to realistic dangers  Developed as a defense against the anxiety caused by these destructive instincts, as children mature the superego gradually becomes transformed into a realistic conscious Object-relations Theorists Influenced by Klein: Margaret Mahler  Margaret Mahler developed an influential object relations theory from her observations of babies as they bonded with their mothers during the first 36 months of life.  Her observations focused on examining the change from security to autonomy, or “the psychological birth of the infant”  Her theory describes how the child becomes separate from his or her primary caregiver, and this eventually leads to a sense of identity  She suggested children pass through a series of three major developmental stages.  Normal autism: from birth until age three or four weeks  A “objectless” stage of “primary narcissism,” the infant is unaware of other people  Normal symbiosis, from the fourth week to the fifth month  the child and mother are a dual unity within one common boundary, mother is distinct but others are still “pre- objects”  Separation-individuation, from the fifth to the 36th month.  children become psychologically separate from their mothers, achieve a sense of individuation and begin to develop feelings of personal identity Object-relations Theorists Influenced by Klein: John Bowlby  Trained in psychoanalysis and object relations by Melanie Klein  Realized that object relations theory could be integrated with an evolutionary perspective.  Felt this could correct the empirical shortcomings of the theory and extend it in new directions  By studying human and other primate infants, he observed three stages of separation anxiety.  Protest, despair, and detachment.  Suggested these were a clear sequence of reactions when separated from their primary caregivers and that these experiences influenced later relationships  As detached children become older their interpersonal relations were more likely to be superficial and lack warmth  Two fundamental assumptions of attachment theory  A responsive and accessible caregiver creates a secure base for the child.  This early bonding relationship becomes internalized and acts as model for future relationships. Related Research from Object Relations Theories  Object relations theory and attachment theory have sparked a great deal of empirical research  Hazan and Shaver, 1987.  Those with secure attachments experience more trust, closeness, and positive emotions in their relationships than from people of the insecure groups.  Simpson et al., 2007  Explored data from a longitudinal study that followed infants into young adulthood  Found that those with secure attachment styles had more positive daily emotional experiences and less difficulty coping with negative aroused in romantic relationship conflicts  Rholes et al., 2007.  Avoidant individuals seek less information about their romantic partners, while anxious individuals seek more.