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KMID : 0385320050160020125
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Journal of Korean Psychoanalytic Society
2005 Volume.16 No. 2 p.125 ~ p.136
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Introduction to Melanie Klein’s Psychoanalytic Theories
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Yu Jae-Hak
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Abstract
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In this paper, the psychoanalytic theories of Melanie Klein are introduced in two parts of the main contents. The first part begins with a chronological introduction of Klein and tells how she sought to help her readers by introducing the important aspects of her papers in her period of presentation. The second section introduces Klein’s psychoanalytic techniques and shows how her theory is being applied to practical psychoanalysis. Despite the fact that Melanie Klein was weaker and less influential politically than Anna Freud, she and her theories have survived to this day because real clinical studies of psychoanalysis coincide with several of her interests and experiences. Therefore, it can be said that the theories of Melanie Klein are clinically oriented and near-experience theories (Stein 1990). How and what parts of Klein’s theories concur with the clinical studies of psychoanalysis can be summed up in several points as follows. First is the emphasis on aggression. Although psychoanalysis is meant to deal with all aspects of human beings, analysts, for several reasons (one of which is that analysts themselves have weaknesses in aggression, and tend to unconsciously avoid topics which deal with aggression), have emphasized only the interpretation of libido and working through. When this happens, analysts can take care of only half of his or her patient’s unconscious mind. Most importantly, the patients’ interest in aggression and the interpretation of these occurrences have made it possible to understand and explain negative therapeutic reactions and the aggressiveness of intractable cases. Second is the accentuation of affect. Freud treated feelings or affects as alien or toxic substances that disappear through expulsion or discharge. In contrast, Klein saw feelings and affects as real things that exist, and stated that affects affiliated with objects continue to live in a dissociated state (Stein 1990). In the author’s understanding, because the affects or feelings change instead of vanishing (change to a favorable affect is preferred over change to an unfavorable affect), Klein’s theory concurs with the state of the patients who are observed. Third, Klein’s initiative interest in the conflict between love and hate developed into her concepts of aggression and reparation, the paranoid-schizoid position and depressive position, envy and gratitude, and early Oedipal and classical late Oedipal (LaFarge 1995) periods. Changes in the clinical studies of these conflicts proved to be much more useful in understanding patients than Freud’s concept of psychosexual development. Especially, the use of the word “position,” instead of “phase,” was more useful in explaining clinical studies. In reality, we can see that even fully-mature adults may remain in the paranoid-schizoid position, and developing means that the paranoid-schizoid position weakens in intensity or decreases in amount (rather than disappearing altogether), and correspondingly, the intensity or amount of the depressive position increases. Fourth and last is the emphasis on transference. Anna Freud believed that transference phenomena do not occur easily in children because they are still attached to their parents. However, Klein, in her observation of children, stated that transference phenomena occur readily in children and what is transferred to the therapist is a child’s object of internal fantasy or his/her relationship with the internal fantasy figure or internal parents. Klein’s stress on transference was not limited to children, and the author believes Klein’s assertion that transference phenomena may readily be found in children is a result of the recent psychoanalytic theory (which states that patients need to be understood with deep knowledge of transference and persistent effort to find transference in analytic treatment), and the tendency of psychoanalysis to easily concur with actual clinical studies. This accentuation of transference phenomena is the most important part of psychoanalysis that is commonly known by all contemporary psychoanalysts.
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KEYWORD
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Melanie Klein, Paranoid-schizoid position, Depressive position
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