Article
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.
What it shows
- 1928
Melanie Klein developed Epistemophilic instinct
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.