Melanie Klein
Although psychology and pedagogy have always maintained the belief that a child is a
happy being without any conflicts, and have assumed that the sufferings of adults are the
results of the burdens and hardships of reality, it must be asserted that just the opposite is
true. What we learn about the child and the adult through psychoanalysis shows that all
the sufferings of later life are for the most part repetitions of these earlier ones, and that
every child in the first years of life goes through and immeasurable degree of suffering….
Every external or internal stimulus (e.g. every real frustration) is fraught with the utmost
danger: not only bad objects but also the good ones are thus menaced by the id for every
access of hate or anxiety may temporarily abolish the differentiation and thus result in a
'loss of the loved object'. And it is not only the vehemence of the subject's uncontrollable
hatred but that of his love too which imperils the object. For at this stage of his
development loving an object and devouring it are very closely connected. A little child
which believes, when its mother disappears, that it has eaten her up and destroyed her
(whether from motives of love or of hate) is tormented by anxiety both for her and for the
good mother which it has absorbed into itself.
It now becomes plain why, at this phase of development, the ego feels itself constantly
menaced in its possession of internalized good objects. It is full of anxiety lest such
objects should die. Both in children and adults suffering from depression, I have
discovered the dread of harbouring dying or dead objects (especially the parents) inside
one and an identification of the ego with objects in this condition. From the very
beginning of psychic development there is a constant correlation of real objects with
those installed within the ego. It is for this reason that the anxiety which I have just
described manifests itself in a child's exaggerated fixation to its mother or whoever looks
after it. The absence of the mother arouses in the child anxiety lest it should be handed
over to bad objects, external and internalized, either because of her death or because of
her return in the guise of a ' bad' mother. Both cases signify to it that it has lost its loved
mother and I would particularly draw attention to the fact that dread of the loss of the
'good', internalized object becomes a perpetual source of anxiety lest the real mother
should die. On the other hand, every experience which suggests the loss of the real loved
object stimulates the dread of losing the internalized one too.
Klein, M. (1935). A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States.
International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 16: 145-174.
Wilfred Bion
CURIOSITY, ARROGANCE AND STUPIDITY
In the paper I presented at the International Congress of 1957 (4) I suggested that Freud's
analogy of an archaeological investigation with a psycho-analysis was helpful if it were
considered that we were exposing evidence not so much of a primitive civilization as of a
primitive disaster. The value of the analogy is lessened because in the analysis we are
confronted not so much with a static situation that permits leisurely study, but with a
catastrophe that remains at one and the same moment actively vital and yet incapable of
resolution into quiescence. This lack of progress in any direction must be attributed in
part to the destruction of a capacity for curiosity and the consequent inability to learn, but
before I go into this I must say something about a matter that plays hardly any part in the
illustrations I have given.
Attacks on the link originate in what Melanie Klein calls the paranoid-schizoid phase.
This period is dominated by part-object relationships. If it is borne in mind that the
patient has a part-object relationship with himself as well as with objects not himself, it
contributes to the understanding of phrases such as 'it seems' which are commonly
employed by the deeply disturbed patient on occasions when a less disturbed patient
might say 'I think' or 'I believe'. When he says 'it seems' he is often referring to a
feeling—an 'it seems' feeling—which is a part of his psyche and yet is not observed as
part of a whole object. The conception of the part-object as analogous to an anatomical
structure, encouraged by the patient's employment of concrete images as units of thought,
is misleading because the part-object relationship is not with the anatomical structures
only but with function, not with anatomy but with physiology, not with the breast but
with feeding, poisoning, loving, hating. This contributes to the impression of a disaster
that is dynamic and not static. The problem that has to be solved on this early, yet
superficial, level must be stated in adult terms by the question, 'What is something?' and
not the question 'Why is something?' because 'why' has, through guilt, been split off.
Problems, the solution of which depends upon an awareness of causation, cannot
therefore be stated, let alone solved. This produces a situation in which the patient
appears to have no problems except those posed by the existence of analyst and patient.
His preoccupation is with what is this or that function, of which he is aware though
unable to grasp the totality of which the function is a part. It follows that there is never
any question why the patient or the analyst is there, or why something is said or done or
felt, nor can there be any question of attempting to alter the causes of some state of
mind. … Since 'what?' can never be answered without 'how?' or 'why?' further difficulties
arise.
Bion, W.R. (1959). Attacks on Linking. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 40:308315.
Harry Guntrip
The early view of the analyst as simply a 'projection screen' for the patient's fantasies has
today already been left behind in its stark simple form, but must still be taken into
account. The patient has personal needs towards the therapist which are not exhausted by
the transfer of infantile eroticism, since he needs his therapist to help him as a real
person. When transference analysis succeeds, the patient's realistic emotional needs
towards the analyst emerge, and they are none the less realistic for emerging at first in
immature forms, belonging to that level of his unconscious childhood life which the
analysis has reached and opened up. Psychotherapy depends ultimately on their
satisfaction. The patient's infantile ego can only grow in a genuine object relationship. If
the therapist persists being, in reality, a mere objective scientific intelligence with no
personal feeling for the patient, he will repeat on the patient the original emotional
trauma suffered at the hands of parents, which laid the foundations of the illness. Those
who are one of a sibling group will say, 'I'm only one of a lot of patients to you,' while
others, and not only those who had no siblings, will say, 'You ought not to have any other
patients but me.' When such reactions have been analysed in terms of the patient's inner
world, I often add a purely realistic comment, 'If you think you can only feel sure of
being loved in the absence of rivals, then you will never feel secure. When you think you
have got someone all to yourself, you will really be living in dread of a rival turning up,
and if that happens you will feel convinced that the person you are needing will desert
you for the other party. You can only feel secure by discovering that you can be valued
and cared about as a person in your own right while others are present.’ These patients
are seeking a parent-child relationship because what they had in that respect was not
adequate to laying the foundations of a strong personality.
Guntrip, H. (1969). Schizoid phenomena, objects relations, and the self. International
Universities Press. Pp. 331-364.
Study Questions
1. How does the Melanie Klein piece explain why some personalities are
internalizing (introjecting) and others externalizing (acting out)?
2. Bion describes “a situation in which the patient appears to have no problems
except those posed by the existence of analyst and patient.” What are the
implications for how this would affect the course of psychotherapy?
3. What do you notice about the differences among the 3 readings, in terms of both
content and style?