Chapter
Some Theoretical Conclusions Regarding the Emotional Life of the Infant
Melanie Klein's paper, published in 1952 in Developments in Psycho-Analysis, is her most systematic account of the infant's emotional life in the first year. The volume, edited by Joan Riviere, was where Klein's group set out its views after the Controversial Discussions. Klein first describes the paranoid-schizoid position of the earliest months. In it the object is split into a good one and a bad one, and the infant relates to it through projection, introjection and projective identification. She then describes the depressive position that follows, when the mother is felt to be a whole person who is both loved and hated. Klein links both positions to the Oedipus complex and to the development of the ego.
Main ideas
- In the first months of life the infant is in the paranoid-schizoid position: the object is split into a good one and a bad one.
- In this position the infant relates to its objects through projection, introjection and projective identification.
- The depressive position follows. The mother is now felt to be a whole person, loved and hated at once.
- Klein ties both positions to the Oedipus complex and to the development of the ego.
- The paper set out the Kleinian group's view of early development after the Controversial Discussions.
What it shows
- 1935
Melanie Klein introduced Part-object
Taking Abraham's notion of partial love as her starting point, Klein contrasts the infant's relation to part-objects, above all the breast, with the move to the whole object that marks the depressive position (1935). She restates the contrast in her 1952 account of infant emotional life.