Concept
Paranoid-schizoid position
Klein's name for the earliest organisation of the infant's mind, which she set out fully in 1946, adding Fairbairn's word schizoid to her earlier paranoid position. Under the pressure of fear of annihilation, the infant splits its objects and itself into wholly good and wholly bad parts, projects bad parts outward and feels persecuted by them, and protects the good by keeping the two apart. The position gives way, though never for good, to the depressive position, in which whole objects can be loved and hated at once.
- Broader concept
- Object relations theory
- Introduced by
- Melanie Klein
- Key works
- 7
- Related
introduced by
- Melanie Klein 1946
derives from
- Splitting 1946 Klein built the earliest position on splitting. The schizoid in its name refers to splitting of the object and the ego, the defence against persecutory anxiety by which the infant keeps the good breast apart from the bad.
- Schizoid position Klein's concept took its name, in part, from Fairbairn's schizoid position, but kept her own account of the death drive and early anxiety.
gave rise to
- Basic assumption 1952 In 'Group dynamics: a re-view' (1952) Bion traced the basic assumptions to a primitive part-object scene tied to the psychotic anxieties, splitting and projective identification of Klein's paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions.
- Autistic-contiguous position 1989 Ogden modelled the new position on Klein's idea of a position and placed it beneath the paranoid-schizoid as a third, more primitive mode. The three stand in dialectical relation rather than in sequence.