Theories on Mother-Daughter Relationship (1):
Mother-Child Relationship (1): Melanie Klein

Introduction and "The Origins of Transference"
Kate Chi-Wen Liu/¼B¬ö¶²

"Some Theoretical Conclusions Regarding the Emotional Life of the Infant"

5.   "Some Theoretical Conclusions Regarding the Emotional Life of the Infant"


The first three or four months of life (The paranoid-schizoid position)

I.

a. sources of anxiety: 1) birth; 2) the recurrent experience of gratification and frustration;

b. infant's first object-relation: with the mother¡Xan interaction involving both libidinal and aggressive impulses, corresponding to the fusion between life and death. Twofold relation to the first object p. 63 (love, destructiveness)

II.

  a. idealized breast vs. persecutory breast p. 64

b. persecutory anxiety influences the processes of splitting, annihilation of the bad breast and wish-fulfilling hallucinations of the good;

c. a gradual switch to a synthesis of the feelings of love and destructive impulses, while anxiety takes the form of depressive one. P. 66

III. introjection of the breast as undestroyed object // the oral-sadistic impulses to devour and scoup out the mother's breast become elaborated into the phantasies of devouring and scooping out the mother's body

IV. splitting, omnipotence, idealization, denial and control of internal and external objects are dominant at that stage. p. 70.

The Infantaile Depressive Position

I.

a) A widening of interest, gratification, phantasies, with sexual organization progressing.

b) related to the mother as a person; the ensuing depressive anxiety and feeling of guilt alter not only in quantity but also in quality. . . . Greed and the defences against it play a significant part. (pp. 72-73)

c) The ego can regresses to the previous stage if the anxiety is too much to take.

d) p. 74 The ego now divides the complete object into an uninjured live object and an injured and endangered one. .. splitting thus becomes largely a defence against depressive anxiety.

II.

a) In periods of mourning, incorporation means reinstating that object as well as ¡¥all his loved objects which he feels he has lost.¡¨

b) powerful oral desire gets replaced by genital desires; jealousy of the mother a desires for the father's penis, an internalized penis.

Further development and modification of anxiety

Conclusion

References

Buckley, Peter, ed. Essential Papers on Object Relations (Essential Papers in Psychoanalysis).   New York : New York University Press.

Hinshelwood, R.D. A Dictionary of Kleinian Thought. Free Association.Bks. April 199 1

Mitchell, Juliet. ¡§Introduction.¡¨ The Selected Melanie Klein . Free Press; 1st American ed edition: 1987.

Moore, Burness E. Psychoanalysis : The Major Concepts . New Haven Yale University Press, 1995.