Article
Personification in the Play of Children
In this 1929 paper in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, Klein takes up a mechanism she had pointed to in earlier work: in play, children invent characters and allot them roles. She draws on the analyses of Erna (6), George (6), Rita (2¾) and several other children. However varied the figures are, she shows, they come down to a few roles: the persecuting super-ego, the threatened but itself cruel id or ego, and a helpful figure, such as a 'fairy mamma', who takes the child's side. She explains personification in two steps. The super-ego is split into the identifications introjected at successive stages of development, and these figures are then projected outward. The earliest super-ego is formed on a pregenital pattern and consists of fantastic imagos that devour and cut to pieces. Kinder imagos, rooted in the oral-sucking stage, open the way to genital primacy and to figures closer to the real parents. Splitting and projection spare the ego the strain of holding a unified, tyrannical super-ego together and keeping its truce with the id. The conflict within the psyche can then be moved into the external world, and this easing of anxiety is a main driving force of the transference. Klein then compares how normal, neurotic, paranoiac and schizophrenic children relate to reality. Schizophrenic children cannot truly play, because their projection fails. Paranoiac children subordinate reality to phantasy and personify richly, but mostly as persecutor and persecuted. Normal children keep a better balance between phantasy and reality. She concludes that the dominance of a terrifying super-ego, introjected in the earliest stages of ego development, is a fundamental factor in the genesis of psychosis. Her lesson for technique is that the analyst must take on whatever roles the child assigns, the hostile ones included, without preferring any. Those roles may be given openly in play or hidden in the negative transference. In this way the frightening imagos can be analysed and give way to milder, more realistic identifications. Play technique thus opens childhood psychoses to diagnosis and cure.
Main ideas
- Play, like the dream, is a form of wish-fulfilment carried out by inventing characters and allotting them roles. Schizophrenic children cannot truly play, since no characters ever appear in their monotonous actions.
- However many figures a child invents, they reduce to a few roles. These are the persecuting super-ego, the threatened but cruel id or ego, and a helper such as the 'fairy mamma' who sides with the child against the persecutors.
- Personification rests on splitting the super-ego into the identifications introjected at different developmental stages, and on projecting these figures into the outside world.
- The earliest super-ego is pregenital and terrifying, a set of fantastic imagos that devour, cut to pieces and overpower. Kinder imagos that stem from the oral-sucking stage pave the way to genital primacy and to imagos closer to the real parents.
- The super-ego is a synthesis of identifications from successive stages. The more extreme and sharply contrasting the imagos, the poorer the synthesis, and the result shows as ambivalence, anxiety, instability and a weak grip on reality.
- Splitting and projection ease the conflict within the psyche by moving it into the external world. This relief of anxiety is a main driving force of the transference and of the analytic process.
- Children relate to reality differently by condition. Normal children balance phantasy and reality. Neurotic children compromise at the cost of inhibited play and learning. Paranoiac children subordinate reality to phantasy and personify mostly as persecutor and persecuted. In schizophrenia, projection fails, and personification and transference fail with it.
- The dominance of a terrifying super-ego, introjected in the earliest stages of ego development, is a fundamental factor in the genesis of psychosis.
- As interpretation relieves anxiety, the figures in play switch from enemy to helper and from bad mother to good. The threatening figures fade and the games end more happily.
- In technique, the analyst must accept whatever role the child assigns, the hostile ones included, and must prefer none. The role may be given openly in play or hidden in the negative transference. Only then can the earliest imagos be reached and the super-ego's excessive severity be gradually modified.
- Play technique makes the earliest stages of super-ego formation open to analysis. By lessening the overwhelming anxiety, it frees the kind imagos to develop, and it gives grounds for hope in diagnosing and curing psychoses in childhood.
What it shows
- 1929
Melanie Klein introduced Splitting
In 1929 Klein first describes the child splitting its super-ego and imagos into separate good and threatening figures, which it projects into the roles of its play. From 1935 to 1946 she makes this the splitting of the object, the breast first, into good and bad. Her precursors are Rado's good and bad mother-imago (1928) and Freud's splitting of the ego (1927, 1938), which is a different idea.