Concept
Aesthetic conflict
Meltzer's term, worked out with Meg Harris Williams in The Apprehension of Beauty (1988), for the conflict the infant meets at the start of life between the beauty of the mother as the senses grasp it, her face, breast and voice, and the uncertainty about her inside, her thoughts and intentions, which can only be imagined. The emotional impact of this beauty is as painful as it is wonderful, and the infant may retreat from it into splitting, idealization and denial, which Meltzer saw as the origin of the paranoid-schizoid position. The capacity to bear the conflict underlies thinking, the love of truth, art and the analytic encounter.
Development
1988
introduced by Donald Meltzer
In The Apprehension of Beauty, written with Meg Harris Williams, Meltzer argues that the infant is first overwhelmed by the beauty of the mother's outside while being unsure of her inside, and that this aesthetic conflict comes at the very start of mental life.
In The Apprehension of Beauty: The Role of Aesthetic Conflict in Development, Art and Violence (1988)
Relations
- 1988 introduced by Donald Meltzer
In The Apprehension of Beauty, written with Meg Harris Williams, Meltzer argues that the infant is first overwhelmed by the beauty of the mother's outside while being unsure of her inside, and that this aesthetic conflict comes at the very start of mental life.
- diverges from Paranoid-schizoid position
Meltzer reverses Klein's order of development: the infant's first experience is an aesthetic, depressive-like response to the mother's beauty, and the splitting of the paranoid-schizoid position is a defensive retreat from the pain of that conflict.
Works
- 1988
The Apprehension of Beauty: The Role of Aesthetic Conflict in Development, Art and Violence
Written with Meg Harris Williams, the book proposes that mental development begins not in persecution but in the infant's overwhelming response to the beauty of the mother. This aesthetic conflict lies between her outward beauty, open to the senses, and her interior, which is enigmatic and can only be imagined. Withdrawal from the conflict underlies many later disturbances, while the capacity to bear it underlies thinking, art and the analytic relationship. Williams's chapters read the conflict in poetry and literature. Its publisher describes the book as a family project of Martha Harris, her daughters Meg and Morag, and Meltzer.
See also
People
References
- The Apprehension of Beauty: The Role of Aesthetic Conflict in Development, Art and Violence1988Evidence for a relation