Depressive anxiety

In Melanie Klein's theory, anxiety for the loved object rather than for the self. It is the dread that one's own hatred, greed and attacks have damaged or destroyed the good object, both the real mother and her counterpart within. It comes with guilt, grief for the object felt to be lost, and longing to restore it. It arises when the infant, from about the middle of the first year, comes to see the mother as a whole person who is both loved and hated. It marks the depressive position, as persecutory anxiety marks the paranoid-schizoid one. Klein set out the contrast in "A Contribution to the Theory of Anxiety and Guilt" (1948). Depressive anxiety can be met by reparation, which strengthens the good internal object and the capacity for concern. It can also be warded off by manic defences or by a retreat to persecutory ways of feeling. Every later loss revives it, which is why Klein linked it to mourning.