Concept
Confusional states
In Herbert Rosenfeld's Kleinian account, first given in his 1950 paper on chronic schizophrenia, states in which the normal splitting that keeps good and bad aspects of the self and its objects apart breaks down, so that love and hate, and good and bad objects, become mixed and cannot be told apart. The patient then fears that the destructive impulses will overwhelm the loving ones and destroy the good self and object. Rosenfeld tied these states especially to envy, which attacks the good object itself, and found them in chronic schizophrenia and also in less disturbed patients. He saw confusion as poised between splitting and integration: it may herald a move towards integration or a retreat from it, and it may itself be used as a defence.
- Broader concept
- Splitting
- Introduced by
- Herbert Rosenfeld
- Key works
- 1
- Related
- Splitting
introduced by
- Herbert Rosenfeld 1950 Rosenfeld's 1950 paper described the confusional states of chronic schizophrenia as a failure of the normal splitting of good and bad objects, so that love and hatred and the good and bad self become mixed up; Klein took the idea into Envy and Gratitude.
derives from
- Splitting 1950 Confusional states are defined against Klein's splitting: they arise when the primary split between good and bad objects, and between loving and hating parts of the self, fails or breaks down, so that the two cannot be told apart.