Concept
Epistemophilic instinct
The urge to know and explore. Freud named it the Wisstrieb, the instinct for knowledge, and linked it to children's sexual researches into where babies come from and how the sexes differ. Melanie Klein made it central to early development. In her account it awakens with the early Oedipus conflict, near the end of the first year, and is aimed first at the inside of the mother's body and what the child imagines it holds: the father's penis, babies, excrement. Because it is fused with sadism and with phantasies of forcing a way in, it soon becomes a source of anxiety and guilt. Too much anxiety about what has been attacked or hidden inside can inhibit curiosity, learning and the capacity to think. When the anxiety is worked through, the drive can be sublimated into intellectual interests. Klein set this out in "Early Stages of the Oedipus Conflict" (1928) and her paper on intellectual inhibition (1931).
Development
1928
developed by Melanie Klein
Klein takes up Freud's instinct for knowledge and ties it to the early Oedipus conflict and to sadistic phantasies about the inside of the mother's body (1928). In 1931 she traces intellectual inhibition to the anxiety this bond creates.
In A Contribution to the Theory of Intellectual Inhibition (1931);Early Stages of the Oedipus Conflict (1928)
Relations
- 1928 developed by Melanie Klein
Klein takes up Freud's instinct for knowledge and ties it to the early Oedipus conflict and to sadistic phantasies about the inside of the mother's body (1928). In 1931 she traces intellectual inhibition to the anxiety this bond creates.
Works
- 1928
Early Stages of the Oedipus Conflict
Paper read by Melanie Klein at the Innsbruck Congress of 1927 and published in 1928, in English and in German as "Frühstadien des Ödipuskonfliktes". Drawing on her analyses of young children, Klein moves the beginnings of the Oedipus conflict and of the super-ego back to the frustrations of weaning towards the end of the first year, a period she sees as dominated by oral and anal sadism. She describes a "femininity phase" through which children of both sexes pass, and an epistemophilic impulse directed at the inside of the mother's body. On her account anxiety and guilt already arise at this early stage, well before the period Freud had assigned to the Oedipus complex.
- 1931
A Contribution to the Theory of Intellectual Inhibition
From the analysis of a boy unable to learn, Klein traces intellectual inhibition to anxiety about the inside of the mother's body. In phantasy the child has attacked it and filled it with dangerous objects. The wish to know becomes bound to that dread, so curiosity and the capacity to take in knowledge are checked.
See also
Linked from
People
References
- A Contribution to the Theory of Intellectual Inhibition1931Evidence for a relation
- Early Stages of the Oedipus Conflict1928Evidence for a relation