if you've ever tried to understand melan Klein's theories you likely felt overwhelmed by the onslaught of terms such as the paranoid schizoid position depressive position the good and the bad breast splitting Annihilation anxiety life and death Instinct she didn't make it easy to understand her Theory but that is a Pity because despite being controversial and weird there is also something interesting to her ideas so in this video we will simplify and clarify her Theory to understand and why ambivalence is a good thing where creativity comes from why someone's AES may all be narcissists and how all of this applies to Harry Potter before we get there if you're new here hi my name is Alina I'm a German psychologist and currently in training to become a psychodynamic psychotherapist and psychoanalyst on this channel we talk about psychodynamic Theory so if this is something for you feel free to subscribe and check out the links Below in the description box for more opportunities to learn read or work with me you can read any of these books looking for Flaws and spoil alert you'll find loads there's a lot to criticize C and clan for or you can read them looking for interesting new ideas that spark your own curiosity and today we choose to indulge in new weird ideas to see what we can get from them there are time stamps below so that you can find exactly what you're looking for but I suggest before we try to understand her Theory we need to take a minute to dive into her remarkable life because you cannot divorce The Thinker from the theory if I had to summarize Melanie Klein's life in one sentence it would be unrelenting power in the face of hardship her forceful authoritarian direct personality is what got her through one devastating loss after the other it helped her jump into a very successful career and also led to painful alienation in both her professional and private life Kleen was born in 1882 in Vienna loses her old father one sister and brother all before she got married having just turned 21 she soon developed a depression that worsened while raising three children and being her husband's trailing spouse and she actually started her own analysis in 1914 with sand feni she read flud heard Freud speak for the first time and in that process not just her depression lifted but her life was forever changed she started publishing her own papers divorced her husband moved first to Berlin then settled in London she becomes one of the Pioneers to the still New Field of psychoanalysis one of the first to develop the new discipline of child analysis and used her newly gained insight to become one of the leading contributors to object relations Theory I made a whole different video about that and she did all this without a University degree AG to her name at a time where psychon analysis was dominated by male medical doctors I mean her biography is quite something I'll link a timeline below from the Melanie kle trust so if you want to learn more feel free to check that out kle considered herself a Freudian in many ways even though she later become the worst rival of Freud's daughter Anna fud and this you know affiliation showed first and foremost when she took Floyd's most controversial concept and made it the backbone of her Theory the foundation of every theory is a certain worldview a certain way of thinking about what it means to be human and one of Klein's controversial assumptions that underpins her theoretical ideas is the idea of the life and death Instinct this is an idea she took from Floyd which was also his most controversial idea that he first discussed in beyond the Pleasure Principle in 1920 and I mean to be precise Freud didn't talk about the life and death Instinct he talked about the life and death Drive Liams on to or Os you know the libido and tanatos this was the ultimate reformulation of his Drive Theory you know trying to answer the question um what internal forces well you know Drive the human being the Death Drive can be a very tricky subject to wrap your head around the first time and that would probably require an entire video but let me try to give give you at least you know very very brief summary according to Floy from the very beginning there is something inside of us that strives towards renewal creating excitement and tension and there's something inside of us that strives towards relief from tension Letting Go returning to an inanimate State and it actually can be easier to understand drives and actions so what might they look like according to fl's previous Theory a drive can be directed towards the self or the object and the life Instinct you know libido in action directed towards the self or the object is what we might call love ranging from mature love to dependency and realistic self-esteem to narcissism the Death Drive In Action is what we would call aggression ranging from setting healthy boundaries achieving Mastery power solving conflicts to the destruction of others or the self there has been a tendency in psychodynamic psychology to move from drives to affect to emotions and we can see here you know incline that would then be expanded on by canb and so on they understand the death drive as our innate capability for Destruction aggression hate versus libido as our innate capacity for love reparation and empathy this is actually how line turn fud's biological Concepts into psychological ones the integration of and dealing with our death Drive our own ability for Destruction is a lifelong task and early on in infants Klein thought it is the primary factor in the causation of anxiety someone who hasn't yet found a way to deal with their death instinct is much more frightened of it in the first way the ego of the infant whose primary function is dealing with anxiety does to calm the anxiety elicited by the death instinct is the Hallmark of client's famed concept of the paranoid schizoid position before we go there why did client use the term position client's positions are not developmental steps that you achieve once and you keep forever her positions are ways of experience and making sense of and dealing with the inner and outer World Klein assumed that an ego is present since birth you know F on the other hand assumed that the ego actually develops out of the a with time and however you know this ego is not yet integrated coherent but one of the main functions even of the early ego is to deal with anxiety and a position then is an attempt of the ego to deal with anxiety usted by the death Instinct through defenses that create characteristic ideas about and relations between the self and and another person this is what we would call an object relation a position is a combination of a certain form of anxiety defenses against it and a resulting selfobject relation and this might all sound quite vague but we'll clarify what exactly that means when we talk about the two positions in detail so keep in mind that positions are states of mind that are there to deal with anxiety and can be inhibited and also abandoned temporarily as we grow older now let's see what those anxieties are that we need to defend against starting with the paranoid schizoid position in 1946 client's paper notes on some schizoid mechanism hits the British psych analytic Society like another fever dream it's considered one of Klein's most important papers in which she properly introduces the paranoid skitso position and the defenses of splitting and projective identification I actually do do recommend reading this it's the first paper in her collection you know called Envy and gratitude this is it um and also you know the envy and gratitude paper itself it can seem a bit intimidating to dive into original literature but it's a somewhat doable read especially if you first watch this video and have somewhat of an idea of how to make sense of her terrible terminology and by the way I'm also trying to gather my notes and make them available to you if you sign up for a new letter so that is probably going to be linked below overall the paranoid schizoid position is a state of mind that according to Klein is prevalent in the first three months of life and then you know gradually decreases throughout childhood and Adolescence in normal development it's assumed to only reappear occasionally under great stress but it is assumed to be the prevalent State of Mind for people suffering from various schizophrenic illnesses as we've covered before Kent assumes an innate death Instinct and that anxiety arises from the operation of the death Instinct within the organism we cannot experience a drive itself but we can experience a drive and action what it does to us or makes us do so she continues that this anxiety is felt as a fear of anihilation according to Klein an infant is afraid of being annihilated this is a part of you know what the term paranoid refers to what a start luckily that's not the only thing that is happening because you know remember there's also the life Instinct Hannah seal one of melan Klein's most famous students writes the immature ego of the infant is exposed from birth to the anxiety stirred up by the inborn polarity of instincts the immediate conflict between the life Instinct and the death Instinct it is also immediately exposed to the impact of external reality both anxiety producing like the trauma of birth and lifegiving like the warmth love and feeding received from its mother so the mind of a newborn the infant becomes the stage of an existential drama how can life survive death how can love win over hate the ego of the infant has to find a way to manage this anxiety and survive the first step to save life from death and love from hate is to try to keep them as far away from each other as possible so that hate does doesn't contaminate love to do that the ego uses the defense mechanism of splitting which is the skitso mechanism the early ego that has not integrated itself splits love from hate you know life from Death to keep love safe from the hate that would otherwise destroy and anihilate it from an outside perspective it's so hard to get an idea what exactly is going on in an infant in the mind of an infant early mental life must just be ch I mean imagine having no language no memory just bodily Sensations like hunger tiredness with no way to make sense of them which you could imagine might feel like a danger of annihilation and the link between aggression and hunger is clear to anyone who has ever been hry we can observe that infants seem to live in one of two states you know either they're fed calm comfortable or they are hungry agitated uncomfortable which you know kind of maps onto you know the life and death Instinct and to split you know this very chaotic experience into two is not you know such a bad idea to make sense of the case and feel a little less anxious now myen Klein gets a bad rap for apparently not caring about the impact of the external world and the real mother but you know again if you read her papers after you've watched this video I don't think you'd agree that she doesn't take it into account so let's take a look at what the next defense against Annihilation anxiety is and what the mother has to do with it the first step to lesson Annihilation anxiety is splitting you know to keep death Instinct from destroying the life within in order to create even more distance between love and hate the ego uses another defense mechanism namely projection this is where the good and the bad breasts come in the infant experiences good and bad States in connection to the breast or the bottle it's the first relation between the self and you know a so-called part object part object because the breast or the bottle is just a part of the whole object the whole person even though the infant still experiences the part object as a part of the self you know there's not yet an awareness that the breast belongs to the mother who who is a separate person so if the breast provides milk at the right time in the right quality with the right speed the self the infant feels good and experiences the breast as good and if the breast doesn't give milk or not at the right time not in the right quality or not the right speed the self feels bad and experiences the breast as bad and in simple terms you know to gain even more distance from one's own destructive impulses the ego projects you know it puts those hateful feelings into the bad breast a part of the death instinct is then projected out you know it's saying no no no you know actually there's nothing destructive inside of me it's all out there where I can fight it and destroy it this is where Klein completes the paranoid bit when she expands that anxiety arises from the operation of the death Instinct within the organism is felt as fear of annihilation death and takes the form of fear of person persecution if any of you have seen my video about the psycho analysis of Dwight tro from the office I think this is a nice case study where I explain more about the paranoid personality style so if you're interested I link that below then consequently all the infant's hate is directed against the bad breast it bites it pinches it screams out and hits that which it believes is out to destroy him and on the other hand it desperately L needs and idealizes the good breast because it is not only the food he desires but also wants to be freed from destructive impulses and persecutory anxiety the good breast is the savior and the bad breast is the persecutor the consequence of splitting the schizoid mechanism is that we have split object relations there is no integration splitting and projection not just allow to keep love and hate apart from each other but also allow to deny that the bad object and destruction even exists and here Melanie Klein says something so beautifully omnipotent denial of the existence of the bad object and of the painful situation isn't the unconscious equal to Annihilation by the destructive impulse it is however not only a situation and an object that are denied and annihilated it is an object relation which suffers this fate and therefore a part of the ego from which the feelings towards the object amonate is denied and annihilated as well I think this nicely links to yung's idea about the creation of the Shadow it seems every time that the destructive impulse becomes too much there is another split in the object and the ego and potentially more and more potency strength and knowledge denied and lost for love to win over hate the infant can try to get rid of the death drive or at least parts of it which we have talked about with the mechanisms of splitting and projection but it can also try to strengthen the life Instinct within which happens through injection of the good breast the life instinct is first projected into the good breast we talked about that and through the gratifying experience reinjected into the ego this process of balanced projection and injection helps to establish what is called the good inner object within the self it might sound a bit strange but you know at the end of the day the good inner object is the inner voice that says you know you might not be perfect but you're a good person or you've worked hard today you know maybe it's time for a cup of tea or you know it's critical in a constructive way like you don't need to act this way this doesn't align with who you are on the inside and as the good inner object gets stronger eventually the confidence that life can actually overcome death that love is more powerful than hate grows and this is necessary to create coherence integration and counteract the splitting which could cause disintegration when the infant feels it less necessary to keep love and hate that far apart you know because it no longer feels like it will be destroyed it slowly starts realizing that the good and bad breath was the same all along which throws it into the next kind of anxiety and the depressive position a good illustration of how we move from the paranoid schizoid to the depressive position is Harry Potter in the beginning love and hate are clearly separate it allows us to fully identify with Harry Potter and despise Voldemort and Snape once Harry reconnected enough with his good inner objects more complexity becomes possible we start seeing that things are just black and white we get to know Tom Riddle The Man Behind Voldemort and can empathize with his traumatic past then revealing snap's backstory might be one of the most moving twists in this series of books beyond the Hostile exterior there's a complex mixture of Love loyalty and the ultimate sacrifice and I assume anyone reading the book felt guilty about how they hated Snape and wanted to make reparations it's no accident that snap's ottering of always has been Inked into many Potter fans and also our hero Harry ke in complexity when it becomes evident that some of Voldemort's Badness is within himself as we've discussed before the paranoid skitso position is activated when we are in a state of fight assertion when we don't know if we survive as this position fend off anation anxiety Klein writes the fact that a good relation to its mother and to the external World helps the baby to overcome its early paranoid anxiety throws a new light on the importance of its earliest experiences if we received love good enough care and established a first basis of the good inner object in the first few months the fear of death gradually diminishes there is enough goodness inside of us to neutralize more of our destructive impulses with decreasing Annihilation anxiety the need for splitting and projection diminishes and we are able to perceive ourselves and others in a whole new way others get to be themselves and not just a repository for parts of us our caregiver didn't frustrate us because they're evil rather they're imperfect fallible people just like us likewise we start realizing that we have the capacity for hate and destruction it's part of us and we are not you know just all good and purely the victim of evil out there this sets off another type of anxiety Klein actually developed the concept of the depressive position before the paranoid skitso position mostly in her paper a contribution to the psychogenesis of manic depressive States in 1935 and the depressive position is called depressive because it deals with the depress exessive anxiety of losing the good object and being abandoned when we realize that the good and bad object are the same person we discover the concept of ambivalence from a modern perspective ambivalence means having loving and hateful feelings towards the same person understanding it in this way we can see that it is actually a developmental achievement if we experience a reasonable level of ambivalence we have arrived in reality where nothing is black and white we have developed the mental capacity to contain complexity which also means we have taken a step back from the illusions of omnipotence and have come to realize our dependence the great loss of this position is that we need to let go of our belief of paradise and Perfection the paranoid SK position you know in that position perfect union is still possible with a perfect object perfect love and now we have to settle for good enough when we realize that we carry destructive impulses inside of us that we are also good and bad we feel great remorse over how we treated the bad object we become really guilty the paranoid skitso position was all about the self and saving the self from destruction even the part object was you know just another extension of the self to store the bad parts in and now the depressive position is is focused on the object you know kind of end the self and is about saving the good inner object from destruction therefore we start to make reparations the defenses of this position have a lot to do with finding ways to navigate our feelings of guilt and manage our destructive impulses to allow for satisfying relationships with others if this position is worked through well enough we can take on responsibility for our own aggression find compromises with others while not losing us in a net of overwhelming guilt or manically abdicating responsibility altogether this position requires us to use our new capacities to solve in the conflicts and find new ways to deal with frustrations and therefore you know if we navigate and work through this position well we develop the capacity for mature love for empathy responsibility and creativ there's a bunch of other Concepts to dive into you know such as projective identification Envy Psychopathology the dangers of excessive introjection and projection Melanie Klein's understanding of the super ego and so much more but um I need to end this video here with criticism about Clans and their theories my first personal criticism is the terminology I dislike the terms Klein uses so much it makes it more complicated than it needed to be in my opinion and it feels like she needed to impress the other male University educated analysts to compensate also yeah I really I can't read her or other client's case studies even just in the papers that I mentioned in this video they are full of very you know primitive terms everything is about penises vaginas feces I I just I don't find it appealing or helpful the second criticism is about treatment now I have never been in Clan analysis but from talking with some of my patrons in my book club I've heard that well their approach is very direct to put it lightly they interpret ruthlessly someone you know benefited from the bluntness of it and another equated it to a rectal exam I recently uh also came across an article written by someone who recognized themselves in a case study written by a clan analyst um I link that below that was quite the read um and as I said you know I've never worked with a cining analyst but this is the criticism I heard and can imagine well from studying Klein then of course you know there's a lot of criticism on her Theory from being too focused on aggression not taking the real caregivers into account enough misrepresenting Concepts and I mean it's it's a little ironic that client's view split the py analytic Society into two camps the Clans and the followers of Anna Freud with one of her harshest critics actually being clein's own daughter milita in general we need to take into account that the followers of a thinker tend to be more radical than the Thinker herself and theorists you know such as Melanie Klein Sigma Freud hin Cod Alice Miller they tend to develop theories that are based on their own personality style and struggles as Nancy M Williams put it either to confirm or to balance them if you're curious to to work r or learn more with me check out the links in the description box to various offers thank you so much for your attention I'm very much looking forward to seeing you next time bye-bye [Music]