Klein and Freud on Infant Development and Projections
20th October 2008
Klein’s idea of infant developmental differs from the Freud’s (1912) stages of libidinal development. Klein’s focus is on the baby’s first year of life (Freud’s oral stage) in which emerges a movement between two mental standpoints: the paranoid schizoid position and the depressive position. Klein uses these positions as ways of capturing configurations of anxieties and defences that arise in early infant’s development. Klein found that Freud’s concept of stages of development, through which a child passes in a well-defined order, was too limiting although like Freud she thought that children’s primary interest shifted from oral to anal and then to genital concerns. Klein also believed that there was a constant movement from the paranoid-schizoid position to the depressive position and back again as a different way to deal with anxiety.
In Klein’s work, the paranoid-schizoid position predominates the baby’s first three months of mental development, with the baby also experiencing some more realistic depressive functioning. In the paranoid-schizoid position the baby attempts to manage anxieties and deprivations, which Klein though were crucial at birth and during early post-natal life. In the paranoid-schizoid position there is no neutral zone, only good and bad. Thus splitting enables the baby to get started with trusting and loving. By separating good from bad the infant experiences total goodness and introjects this goodness (good object) as a basis for his sense of the self.
While the baby experiences goodness as uncontaminated by badness, at some other times, he feels to be in the hands of evil and that he will be destroyed by an external force. This fear, which Klein called persecutory anxiety is the hallmark in the paranoid schizoid position.
This fearful anxiety derives not only from bad experiences in the outside world but also from aggressive and destructive impulses (death instincts, crucial in Klein’s work) projected into the mother. If the baby’s anxiety is intense, he will project into the other person all aspects of the self. This form of defence enables the baby to get rid of a part of the self that is felt painful, thus giving the illusion of having some control over the other person.
In the paranoid schizoid position, the projection of unwanted parts may end up in feeling empty, depleted and confused as to where the person ends and the other begins. The paranoid schizoid position, with its persecutory anxiety, is not something that we grow out of, although its forces may be lessened from our first dealings with living. The main preoccupation for the baby is survival, thus the paranoid schizoid position is self-centred and ruthless. A transition from a paranoid-schizoid to the depressive position takes place at the time when an internalisation (projection and introjection processes) of the mother relationship begins, which is essential to the origin of internal objects.
In Klein’s view, the depressive position develops in the second half of the first year and it further develops at three months of life, thus becoming the central position in the child’s development. During the depressive position period the ego is able to re-introject the love that it has given out as well as taking in goodness from other sources. There is a balance between giving out and taking in, in which the baby (and later the child and the adult) begins to integrate bad and good experiences rather than splitting them. There is an awareness of the object as a whole with both loved and hated characteristics, as well as an awareness of the self as a whole with loving and hating beings. In the depressive position conflicts between different parts of the self are no longer solved by separating good parts from bad ones and pushing them into others. Instead the baby holds and integrates them within the self. Once the baby reaches the depressive position, his thoughts and thinking provide a mean of holding into a mental representation the absent mother as a good object.
The “internal-mother object “ is seen as a more resilient to attack as well as both loved and hated. In this way the baby gradually achieves a sense of internal strength in the way that a good object is a source of support throughout life. It is when things go well enough that the baby is able to come to terms with the worst of the paranoid-schizoid anxieties and begin to take his survival more for granted. The baby has less need for the splitting, denial and projection defences, which keep persecutory anxiety at bay.
In the depressive position the baby experiences inner and outer reality more accurately. As splitting diminishes, different experiences fit better together, the bad is less bad and the good is less good are though of as the same thing. The baby realises that the projections of his bad self and all bad things he has done to the other person (the mother) are the people he most loves and he needs. This realisation makes the baby terrified of his anger, which is central for the depressive position. Thus the baby’s fear of his anger forms a major part of the super-ego as well as a feeling of guilt that gives rise to a new capacity for the child for reparation. Therefore the baby becomes aware of having attacked the breast (later the mother) with a need to repair the damage. As the baby is afraid of projecting his anger outside, he turn it inward making himself being selfish or bad rather than the other person. This is the core of depression, which leads to the depressive position. The depressive position enables the baby to relate differently to people in the future, to hold and keeping love relationships. In Klein’s view this is a maturing process for the growing child.
It is clear that for Klein the growth of the ego is centred upon the capacity to internalise a good object from the beginning of life that can support the ego in its development. Klein believed in the interplay between life and death instincts as an essential part of her developmental model of the ego. Although Klein’s concept of projective-identification has become the most popular of her theory, considerable controversy emerged over the definition and use of the concept. itself. A question that may arise is whether projection identification should be distinguished from projection. Klein (1932) considered projection as a mental mechanism and projective identification as a particular fantasy expressing it.
The Concept of Projection
With projective identification Klein added depth and meaningfulness to Freud’s concept of projection. Klein emphasised that one cannot have a fantasy of projective impulses without projecting part of the self, which involves splitting. Also impulses and parts of the self may not vanish once projected. Unconsciously if not consciously, the individual may retain some sort of contact with projected aspect of himself.
However, Klein’s projective identification has been widely applied to psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It may be possible to assume that the link between patient and analyst or infant and breast is the mechanism of projective identification. The idea of a divided self suggests that one portion of the self is unknown to another portion of the self. Thus a theory of a divided self assumes that some aspects of the self are unconscious. To this extent, the Object Relation School has inspired psychoanalytic psychotherapy, where the therapeutic situation is seen to replicate early relationships as they were shaped by an internalised self and representations. During the process of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, affects that are associated with the analysand past traumatic relationships are “transferred” or projected onto the analyst, who also experiences these affects.
The concept of Transference
The concept of transference is commonly used in psychoanalysis and it is viewed not as a resistance to treatment but as a means by which the analyst becomes familiar with the analysand internal world. This familiarity provides knowledge of internal object representations as well as an opportunity for the analysand to modify his or her relationship to the self and others. The mechanism by which transference takes place is projective identification.
Transference is a characteristic of psychoanalysis psychotherapy, which paves the way of entering the analysand unconsciousness, thus his past in its unconscious and conscious aspects is revived. In psychoanalytic psychotherapy settings, through the projective identification process, threatening or bad parts of the self are projected from the analysand onto the analyst. The analyst acts as a recipient of bad (hate) and good parts (love) of the analysand. A positive and negative transference takes place. The analysis of the negative and positive transferences is important for the analyst. because it gives him an opportunity to explore early interplays between love and hate, the origin of aggression, anxieties and feeling of guilt toward whom these emotional states of the analysand are projected to. The analysis is a pre-condition for analysing the deeper layers of the analysand mind. As emphasised by Klein, the projective identification process is a crucial aspect of psychoanalytic psychotherapy because of what it reveals about the analysand’s internal-object world as well as it provides opportunities for therapeutic modifications. For instance, the analysand may experience the analyst as the bad object. In such case the therapeutic change occurs when new modes of interpersonal relating are learned through the analyst’s capacity to provide the necessary counterbalance to these bad objects during the transference process. Transference develops with the same process that determines object-relations in the early stages of infant life (the main characteristic of Klein’s theory).
The holding environment
In the psychoanalytic psychotherapy, the analyst should provide a holding environment in which he contains and mirrors the analysand’ projected material (Winnicott, 1971, 1989) By providing a holding environment the analyst replicates the experience of a “good-enough mother”, thereby facilitating the analysand self-discovery and exploration of healthy modes of relating to others. When the analysand projects bad parts of the self, a negative transference such as envy and hate originates toward the analyst. This reflects the main focus of Klein (1957) envy and gratitude development in early infancy In Klein’s view, negative transferences is considered a pre-condition for analysing layers of the analysand’s mind, which is deeply rooted in infancy. However, ideas about projective identification have been further developed by Bion (1963) in relation to the dynamics of transference and counter-transference. According to Bion the counter-transference appears to have a distinct quality that should enable the analyst to differentiate the occasion when he is the object of a projective identification from the occasion when he is not. The analyst may feel that he is being manipulated so as to play a part in somebody else’s fantasy. The analytic situation thus reshapes problematic issues of the analysand early development A counter-transference is a response of the analyst which enable the analysand to become consciously aware of certain aspects of the self, thus improving his relations with others. During psychoanalysis there is a great certainty for the analysand of being merged with the analyst (mother’s figure) enabling himself to live and to relate to others without the need for projective and introjective identification mechanisms.
Conclusions
While projective identification has made a great contribution to our understanding of the development of the “self” and its relevance to psychoanalytic psychotherapy, some personal considerations may also be taken into account. For instance some cultural factors may well affect the process of “self” development. Although in Western individualistic cultures the Klein’s model has been widely accepted it is uncertain whether in other cultures (collectivistic, power distance or feminine/masculinity societies), in which individuals have inherited different parental beliefs and values, the concept and development of the “self” is influenced by different religious beliefs and values with respect to love and hate. If projective identification is conceived as an integrated part of our life’s struggle to survive, to love and be loved by significant others, we may not willing to accept our “self” because we are afraid of the unconscious and traumatic experiences of our infancy. These traumatic experiences may be just the result of our parents’ “projections” and “introjections”. We become unconsciously the recipient of our parents’ love and hate. Consequently we may come to terms with our personality (self) only when good and bad parts of our parents will be accepted and integrated in our conscious mind. If psychoanalytic psychotherapy is there to help us to become consciously aware of a “self” that is unknown and that it only belongs to our parents, then projective identification would never satisfy our innate desire of discovering our real self.
© Nicola Caramia
References:
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