Abstract
This paper explores Melanie Klein’s life and work, interpreting her radical psychoanalytic position theory—paranoid-schizoid and depressive (Ps-D)—as a circular progression of consciousness, experience, and realisation. Analysing Klein’s biography and clinical observations, the prerequisite of ambivalence is emphasised in the development of the ‘Ps’ and ‘D’ positions to precisely echo the development of contradiction as the precondition of the thesis and antithesis in Hegel’s dialectic. This logical connection itself does not restate Klein’s status as a psychoanalytic visionary and radical but its emphasis illustrates her position theory within the dialectic tradition. This interpretation realises an unarticulated philosophical tension and release in Kleinian psychoanalytic consciousness while positioning the historical Klein as a solitary matriarch in the vanguard of radical dialecticians. This short paper can but merely allude to an abbreviated outline of the wider import of this subject matter. Hence it is imperative to recognise that a comprehensive reassessment of the precondition of contradiction in the form of ambivalence necessitates the expertise of specialised scholars and worthwhile research.
Introduction: Background
Melanie was born into the Reizes family in Deutschkreutz, Hungary, on 30th March 1882. She would emerge as a pioneering female psychoanalyst and child-focused clinician. Her father, Moriz, a doctor from Ukraine, and her mother, Libussa (née Deutsch) from Slovakia, instilled in young Melanie a passion for learning, culminating in her pursuit of medicine. At seventeen, Melanie agreed to marry Arthur Stevan Klein, a union marred by the loss of her beloved father in the subsequent year. Their marriage, beginning in March 1903, would eventually unravel amidst Klein’s growing dissatisfaction, anxiety, and depression. Klein’s transformative life and work in psychoanalysis began with her first analysis with Sandor Ferenczi between 1914 and 1919, a period marked by personal upheavals, including her mother’s passing. In 1919, Klein, relocating to Rosenberg, Hungary, faced a tumultuous time in her sixteen-year marriage. The turning point came in 1921 when she left for Berlin with her youngest son, Erich, leaving behind her daughter Melitta and son Hans.
In Berlin, under the mentorship of Karl Abraham, Klein’s psychoanalytic career flourished. Her first paper on child analysis, using her son Erich (alias “Fritz”) as a case study, marked her full membership in the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society by 1923. Following a brief analysis with Abraham, Klein acknowledged the end of her marriage and focused on her professional growth, despite the wider challenges faced by the psychoanalytic community, such as the murder of Hermine Hug-Hellmuth. Klein’s relocation to London in 1926, sponsored by Ernest Jones, signified a new chapter. Here, she analysed Jones’ family members and was elected to the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1927. Klein’s work, particularly on symbol formation and ego development, garnered attention, but her personal life suffered a devastating blow with her eldest son Hans’s accidental death in 1934. Throughout World War II, Klein temporarily moved to avoid air raids, returning to London in late 1941. The following years witnessed controversies, such as Edward Glover’s resignation from the British Psychoanalytical Society and Klein’s introduction of pioneering concepts in psychoanalysis, including her seminal paper on schizoid mechanisms.
Klein’s life, interspersed with personal tragedies and professional triumphs, culminated in her death on 22nd September 1960. A host of friends and colleagues attended her cremation. It marked the end of a life that significantly changed psychoanalytic practice and theory. Melitta’s absence from the funeral symbolised the complexities in Klein’s relationships. Klein’s winding path, characterised by dazzling creativity and emotional depth, reflects her radical contributions to psychoanalysis. Her relentless pursuit of understanding the human psyche—amidst personal and professional challenges—proved her as a matriarch in the field, reshaping British psychoanalytic thought and worldwide analytic practice.
.1: Consciousness
‘It can hardly be doubted that the world of phantasy plays the same part in psychosis and that there too it is the storehouse from which the materials or the pattern for building the new reality are derived. But whereas the new imaginary external world of a psychosis attempts to put itself in the place of external reality, that of a neurosis, on the contrary, is apt, like the play of children, to attach itself to a piece of reality – a different piece from the one which it has come to defend itself – and to lend that piece a special importance and a secret meaning which we … call a symbolic one. Thus we see that both in neurosis and psychosis there comes into consideration the question not only of a loss of reality but also of a substitute for reality.’[1] (Freud, S., 1924, ‘The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis’)
Today Klein is widely acknowledged as a pivotal figure in the shift from the drive/structure model to the relational/structure model.[2] Her success was due in part to her ability to garner support from those members of the British Psychoanalytic Society who rejected a strict, literal interpretation of Freudian psychoanalysis. Instead, Klein championed a more expansive and metaphorical interpretation of the discipline’s potential as a dynamic theoretical and clinical practice. Klein’s contributions sparked renewed interest in the complex concepts surrounding the ego-subject division, object introjection, and the symbolic formation of anxiety – particularly in relation to the early manifestation of the death instinct. These debates were highly contentious, reflecting the broader global conflicts of the wartime era. Klein’s allies in the British School, so-known as the Kleinists, included her analytic supervisees, psychiatrists, and vocal advocates of her idiosyncratic purview; most notably, these included Wilfred Bion, Segal, and Rosenfeld.
Before enquiring into the central themes of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, it is crucial to preface Klein’s introduction with an elucidation of her terminology. Specifically, we must address the nuanced differences between the terms ‘stage,’ ‘phase,’ and ‘position.’ Segal (1973) says of Klein that she ‘chose the term ‘position’ to emphasise the fact that the phenomenon she was describing was not simply a passing ‘stage’ or ‘phase’ such as, for example, the oral phase; her term implies a specific configuration of object relations, anxieties, and defences which persist throughout life.’[3] Meltzer (1978) notes this development from an initial (i.e., Klein, 1935) usage of the term position as referring to ‘pathological configurations‘ and contrasts the later longitudinal emphasis (i.e., Klein, 1946). That is, from a pathological to a lifecycle significance.[4] Due to either ambiguity or interpretation, showing a stable situation for the term position largely depends on one’s preferred starting chronology. It is, however, interesting that the term in question—position—and the term’s coming into adoption has something to do with moving away from stage or phase theories and far less to do with mere semantics. In their scholarly dictionary, The Language of Psychoanalysis (1973), the authors chose to abstain from offering a definition of the term position. It is pertinent to mention that Laplanche and Pontalis (1973) did not offer any explicit explanations for the terms ‘stage’ or ‘phase’. This could imply that they considered it unnecessary to define these terms in a theoretical framework. Similarly, the decision of the author to omit a definition of ‘position’ could have been affected by the belief that the term is already widely understood. But it could also have been a conscious decision to encourage the reader to interpret the terms in question and their meaning within the context of Freudian or Lacanian psychoanalysis only. Nonetheless, a close reading of Klein will swiftly reveal the term position as indicative of something in which one finds human development constellating around or inhabiting a relatedness between internal objects one struggles to resolve or a flight away from a contradictory space.31 In so doing, Klein situates human development not in stages or phases but as something only glimpsed in states of movement, or better yet, as positions towards or away from something inherently ambivalent or contradictory.
Hence one might suggest that a position is in relation to a first ambivalence—a position as a see-saw kind of ambivalence, or a position as a toing and froing kind of ambivalence. Thus, the main point to make clear is that the term position always relates to something ambivalent, which is certainly the travel to or from what psychoanalysis terms ambivalence.
Then, if one holds with this line of reasoning, in returning to Klein’s early period of clinical work, one can and perhaps should begin with her view of depressive anxiety, and later the depressive position, in the years between 1919 and 1935.[5] In this early to mid-part of her clinical work, Klein does not propose, in so many words, a revision of classical psychoanalysis but instead offers a reappraisal of classical ideas in light of child analysis, thereby defining a new direction available to contemporary psychoanalysis. In this period, Klein came to appreciate young children’s mental lives as enacting fantasies in deflection of the death instinct. These deflections result in either a splitting of the ego or a ‘synthetic’ or ‘guilt’ complex of the superego, the so-named depressive position, which she had interpreted in the enacted fantasies of children and inferred from observations and clinical findings drawn from psychiatry and psychoanalysis.
Freud inferred the original path to supply his account of the psychology of neurotic melancholia in adult life. This inference concerned the loss of the good or the threat of the loss of the good, something which is at least in large part one of the cardinal points that define classical psychoanalysis. An attribution of imbalance occurs, for Klein, says Rosenfeld (1952), when ‘persecutory objects predominate and disturb the ability to maintain good objects inside which normal ego and superego developments depend.’[6] To paraphrase Forrest Gump’s wonderful phrase, normal is what normal does.[7]Apropos of the depressive position in young children, one finds Joan Riviere (1952) referring to loss resulting from the ‘imbalance of Eros or Thanatos‘ as requiring a mourning of the lost object—in this case, Eros—that is, as a desirous experience of the lost object of ‘Love’.[8] The similarity of the use of the term mourning to make sense of the experience of loss—if it is not more or less identical to Freud’s (Mourning and Melancholia, 1918) own account for adult loss—provides Klein with a central location for the young child’s experience of mourning-melancholy equal in form, if not content, to that found in the adult experience of mourning and melancholia. Here, the loss of ‘love’ and the fear of love’s loss in adult life reflect the most painful aspect of loss in separation or desolation. However, in Freud (1918), no ambivalent juxtaposition is made plain against a backdrop of contrary experiences of love’s celebration or declaration. Here in the absence of an adequate explanation for ambivalence found in Freud’s (1918) account of connecting loss – mourning – melancholia that creates a research gap for Klein’s main emphasis insofar as her early clinical work on the depressive position is concerned by taking advantage of Freud’s (1918) non-inclusion of the role of ambivalence. Hence Klein re-situates the role of ambivalence at the heart of young children’s experience of depressive anxiety in the depressive position as something potentially good and/or bad separately but also in coincidence. One might wish to take a closer look to see whether and to what extent Klein could take this movement or relatedness towards or away from ambivalence.
.2: History
‘I have often had occasion to point out that emotional ambivalence … the simultaneous existence of Love and hate towards the same object – lies at the root of many important cultural institutions. We know nothing of the origin of this ambivalence.’[9] (Freud, S. 1913, ‘The Return of Totemism in Childhood’)
In the epigraph to this section, Freud (1913) draws his reader’s attention toward the presence of ambivalence ‘at the root of many important cultural institutions,’ but also, I think, to the plain ubiquity of ambivalence yoked together with what he believed to be the unknown ‘origin of ambivalence.’ From this passage one may infer that Freud is inviting his reader to consider that ‘we know nothing of the origin of this ambivalence,’ whether it might or might not be a worthwhile task for psychoanalysis to excavate further in this area? It is precisely this avenue for serious ongoing psychoanalytic clinical research—the roots of origination of ambivalence—that I would like to suggest in the following discussion as a central feature never very far from Klein’s attention during her middle period (i.e., the elaboration of the paranoid-schizoid position) and the later period (i.e., the elaboration of Ps-D functioning across the lifecycle) of her writing.
Klein’s observations of the infant’s depressive anxiety states in the depressive position had prompted her to redress the date of an observable superego—whatever that might look like enacted in play—to approximately two years of age. In the nascent infant, what happens next was inferred to account for preoedipal behaviours shown in a more immature position preceding primitive defences or psychotic anxiety states. She suggests an emphasis previously on the need for a balanced two-way relation, and one might say a split relation, between the infant and the newly encountered objects of external reality. In her own words, Klein writes of ‘a securely established love… [that] gives the ego a feeling of riches and abundance which allows for an outpouring of libido and projection of good parts of the self into the external world without a sense of depletion arising.’[10] That sense of ‘riches and abundance’ would lead to what she continues to describe as a ‘balance between giving out and taking in, between projection and introjection.’ When considering the fluctuations of perceived reality and bodily reality composed at once in an admixture of interior and exterior objects and a corresponding transference between those objects—one might forgive wishing to step back here to take stock of what Klein is suggesting. One might then begin to slowly digest that Klein’s discovery of what she termed the depressive position, that is, the ‘balance between giving out and taking in, between projection and introjection,’ should by the logical necessity of an informed close examination of infantile observation be preceded by a psychological position before the developmental achievement of balance.[11] The location of this position of imbalance, so to speak, Klein would come to terms with—with a helpful nudge from Ronald Fairbairn’s (1943) paper mentioned above—the paranoid-schizoid position. Furthermore, object relations, once it has been framed in this more complete sense as Klein (1946) suggests, ought to become something rather ambitious for psychoanalysis to investigate in others and also investigate within ‘itself,’ insofar as psychoanalysis can be viewed as itself to be an ambivalent body of clinical knowledge and praxis. We will, of course, return to this idea later.
The paranoid-schizoid position writes Segal (1973), ‘must start with a description of the [Kleinian] ego,’ which she continues is ‘capable of forming a phantasy object relationship’ and ‘has from the start the capacity to experience anxiety [and] use defence mechanisms’ as a direct result of the death instinct.[12] Klein had closely attended to her mentors and Freud’s writings, and in so doing, had constructed the role of a split in the ego into good and bad part-objects as foundational to a more representative emotionally mature outlook (whole object ambivalence) to account for and discriminate between that which might describe the objects of the oedipal domain from the dark continent of the preoedipal domain. Klein’s interest in the preoedipal’s dark continent mobilises her thoughts to understand and build an account to explain the infant’s mental life before the Freudian oedipal phase of development.
Segal (1973) writes of this preoedipal—paranoid-schizoid position—as a psychic space ‘in constant flux, its integration varying from day to day or even moment to moment,’ a psychical space in which bodily organisations partially prototype a split between good and bad desires to meet our most basic human appetites.[13] For Klein, it is within a polarity, a binary opposition born of two instinctual impulsions—that of life and death, no less—than the early ego experiences associations with something not-good, that is, an experience of something bad that as a pre-verbal experience becomes pre-verbally enacted as a ‘fear of a persecutor,’ persecutory anxiety. Where in Freud’s writing, the reader is led to consider the loss, the mourning, and the substitution of ‘the good’ for ‘the bad,’ so it is that in reading Klein, one might begin to uncover an equally important consideration of the role of the ‘bad,’ the loss of the ‘bad,’ the mourning for the ‘bad,’ and the substitution of the bad for the good. Here, then, Klein has taken Freud’s (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920) appreciation of the role of the death instinct, as well as children’s imaginative enactments in play (e.g., Fort-Da!), and appears to have inverted the narrative of the oedipal development of neurotic (depressive) anxiety into a narrative for the preoedipal development of psychotic (paranoid-schizoid) defence, no less. Moreover, it is perhaps in this chiasmus, this grammatical inversion, that Klein’s understanding, derived from close observation of young children (1919), together with her remarkable knack for reappraising the storytelling of enactments of infra-conscious phantasies, supported by a close reading of Freud’s writing (notably Mourning and Melancholia, 1918; Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, 1926), culminating in her embrace of a new theoretical attitude on the hitherto unanalysable psychosis, which was to characterise her psychoanalytic style as both radical and innovative par excellence.
Undeniably, Klein’s significance as a psychoanalytic thinker is, one might venture, precisely because of her attentiveness to what had till that point in time not received attention from wider psychoanalysis: pre-verbal enactments, observation, and the interpretation of mental contents using a new psychoanalytic language for partial and whole objects. Therefore, her preference in attending to the dark continent over the accepted and acceptable transformations of ego, oedipal libido, and language of psychoanalysis proper was and stays, for some, a departure too far from psychoanalysis, a heterodoxy. For others, however, the application of this heterodoxic approach had slipped the accustomed debate—on the defences available to the nascent split ego-subject in an economic structure—from its proper mooring and provided reason enough to free psychoanalysis to grow, a dialectic growth.
Having acclimated to Klein’s mature theories, D.W. Winnicott (1962) overcame his earlier misgivings—concerning Mrs Klein’s departure from Freud—to first acknowledge and then publish a description of Klein’s middle and late-period contribution to psychoanalysis: the paranoid-schizoid position as an internal psychological state of ‘talion dread,’ and of external ‘objects’ to be projected onto or introjected from—following Abraham’s (1924) influential concept of introjective-projective cycles.[14] Partial objects or whole objects could now, it appears, be spoken about and discussed by clinicians determined to uncover more about the possible defensive repertoire available against persecutory anxiety. A detailed understanding of paranoid-schizoid functioning, particularly its preoedipal pole, can be systematically explained through Klein’s late work. Hence it is imperative to shift the discussion towards exploring Klein’s Ps-D as a position model, which offers several implications that need inferring. By delving into the nuances of Klein’s work, we can gain a better understanding of the complexities involved in paranoid-schizoid functioning and its impact on an individual’s psyche.
Thus, Klein (1952/1955) had this to say confidently about the new direction for psychoanalysis brought about by her and her new allies:
‘The conclusion to be drawn from the experience that depressive anxiety arises as a result of the ego synthesising the good and bad (loved and hated) aspects of the object led me in turn to the concept of the depressive position.’[15]
Through her clinical observations of children and work with adult borderline states, Klein’s thesis is clearly demonstrated. She acknowledges the central importance of ambivalence in human development, considering it a necessary prerequisite. Klein shared the belief that the opposing yet inseparable realisations of ego, stemming from both love and hate, were not only critical to Freudian theory (e.g., 1913), but also served as a dialectical foundation for her own groundbreaking approach, her new direction for psychoanalysis.[16]
Hence this movement, called the depressive position, reflects the ego’s ambivalence as it constantly seeks a synthesis of the object’s good and bad aspects due entirely to the reality principle’s inherently contradictory nature.
Klein (1946) had, for some but not all clinicians, made a connection between the lives of children and the lives of psychotic adults by submitting another confident proposal, again radical, that ‘the infantile depressive position represents the fixation point for later manic-depressive illness.’[17] This statement may appear at first glance a theoretical leap, yet this understanding of connecting the early life of children and the very poorly adult life—what Rosenfeld (1952) locates within the ‘defective superego’—was built upon a foundation of clinical work with young children and presented an extension of thought from Freud. Hence the depressive position followed from an earlier developmental position (the paranoid-schizoid position) in recognition of the persistent role played by ambivalence. This purview of human development as movements or transformations, of relations with partial or whole objects and others, of pathology and the lifecycle, beginning and endings with ambivalence.[18]
Can theories be things of beauty? Perhaps. But sometimes ambivalence freights poetic truths so contradictory that one feels compelled not to look away but to look even closer—as if catching oneself looking at a reflection of one’s self.
.3: Realisation: Dialectical Synthesis
‘Like the analyst, but unknowingly so, the mother accompanies her child in this working through that causes him to lose her— and then to use words and thoughts to make reparation to her. The maternal function takes refuge in the alchemy that relies on the loss of the self and the Other to attain and to develop the meaning of mortifying desire, but only through the love and gratitude that actualizes the subject.’ (Kristeva, J. (2001). Melanie Klein. Columbia University Press. p. 247)
Within the ambit of the Hegelian system dialectic is a radically anti-dualist theory serving as both tension and release, around which the edifices of consciousness, history, and reality become a process of realisation. Hegel contends that the movement of consciousness is not linear but circular or dialectical—a series of progressive transformations wherein each position or moment of consciousness, history, or reality embodies, contradicts, and reorganises an always already returning thesis. But what does that mean? Or better yet, what does that entail? Within a thesis lies intimate contradictions or an antithesis awaiting expression, which is not a mere negation of the thesis but something integral to its essence, challenging and disputing the completeness of the thesis.[19] These antithetic contradictions are ‘intimate’ in many senses; they are opposing, indistinguishable, unsustainable, or incapable of separateness. The resolution of these contradictions—as thesis and antithesis—does not result in a nullification but in a dialectic return as synthesis, a higher state of truth that reconciles the conflicting elements into a more comprehensive unity or thesis. Thus, the concept of dialectic is set in motion by a first state, a thesis, which begins to reveal its internal tensions. Naming the circular structure in Klein’s psychoanalytic position theory—precisely the way Julia Kristeva’s characterisation does—illuminates a striking resonance and differentiation regarding what does and does not constitute a dialectic framework.[20] In other words, Kristeva’s description of Klein’s position theory as ‘more circular than dialectical,’ contrasts at first glance contradiction with ambivalence yet factually locates their coincidence—once the thirdness of reality becomes clear—with Charles Taylor’s estimable view that the Hegelian dialectic takes two forms:
‘It can be that the purpose is in fact unrealised in the thing as it is; and in this case the existing reality will necessarily go under or be transformed as the purpose in further pursuing itself cancels its adequate fulfilment. Or it can be that the standard is already met. And that the contradiction will force us to change our conception of the standard or purpose, or our conception of reality in which it is fulfilled, in order to give a coherent account of this fulfilment.’[21]
Taylor’s two definitions for the Hegelian dialectic, and indeed those definitions referred to by most if not all his eminent philosophical colleagues (e.g., Isiah Berlin, Bernard Williams), students and readers, point to the first example cited above pertaining to the dialectic of history, while the latter to the dialectic of consciousness. However, these two aspects are always already intertwined. Taylor’s argument here is characteristically clear: the theoretical form of knowledge is inherently flawed if it lacks an accurate understanding of its own nature. Hence optimal knowledge can only be achieved when humans possess an adequate conception of it. As a result, the dialectic of theories of knowledge (history) is connected to a dialectic of historical forms of consciousness. Thus one must turn to a third position: the fundamental standard or purpose, the insufficient reality, and an inadequate concept of this standard linked to that reality. In other words, the presence of the third term gives rise to a conflict with the established norm. This third term is none other than reality itself.
Kristeva’s comment may show that, in her view, Klein’s theory revisits themes repetitively, lacking the transformative evolution inherent in Hegel’s formulation of dialectic. This interpretation suggests Kristeva sees Klein’s approach as static compared to Hegel’s dynamic process. Considering Kristeva’s expertise in psychoanalytic and philosophical concepts, her statement likely reflects a nuanced critique of Klein’s theory within a Hegelian framework, rather than a misunderstanding or translation error. Her assessment points to a distinctive interpretation of Klein’s theory, differing from the transformative progression of Hegelian dialectics despite their shared circularity.
Her developed theory (Ps-D) shows that Hegel’s and Klein’s circularity types are intimately connected. In both ‘Ps’ and ‘D’ each position realises the object or other, and much like Hegel’s dialectic for consciousness and history, both necessarily realise the dialectical synthesis. But a small few may still question the third element in Klein’s theory. Whereas the majority may have already surmised the third part. That the third part of Klein’s position theory is reality should be clear.
If one takes for example Bion’s (1962) papers, where it is rigorously, mathematically, emphasised that pre-conception represents expectation and is set in contrast with a realisation, and the result is a conception representing appropriate sense impressions. Then one must assume a reality to make sense from (and a conception always already with a ‘developmental history.’)[22],31 This Platonist account for conception, containment, and the dialectic circularity of these links, and the qualities associated with these links, are referred to using the letters L, H, and K, which represent loving, hating and knowing. (Meltzer most notably extends this post-Kleinian metaphysics powerfully by extrapolating from the equation (Ps-D) generatively, if not entirely clearly.)[23]
So upon careful examination of Klein’s mature writings, it becomes plain that she presents two primary positions about the early psychological development of infants set against a threatening reality of objects and otherness. These positions are characterised by a constant interplay of internal contradictions, resulting in a circular flux of progression, fragmentation, and symbolisation. The two positions in question carry strong valances, the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive.2 The paranoid-schizoid position may be profitably analogised or not to Hegel’s notion of thesis. In this stage, the infant’s psyche is fragmented and characterised by part-object relationships, which denotes an incomplete and divided awareness of self and others. This state is permeated by paranoia due to the perception of threats to its nascent self, resulting in a defensive splitting—a psychic mechanism to manage the good and bad parts of the self and objects.2,5 So while necessary for early psychic life, this fragmented state inherently contains its own sexual antithesis—epistemophilia. The defences that support the splitting defence also urge sexual frustration, anxiety and uncertainty, which is the inherent contradiction of the paranoid-schizoid position. As the infant’s capacity for concern develops, these contradictions and urges intensify, precipitating the depressive position, a position of reparation and symbolisation. This latter stage is marked by a sense of loss and a mourning for the ideal wholeness that has yet to exist truly. Here ‘reparation’ represents Hegel’s antithesis, wherein the infants psyche faces the reality of its own fragmented nature and the impact of its aggressions on the desired wholeness of an object, an other, a mother, a reality with which it has found itself thrown inextricably into relation.5
The synthesis in Klein’s model arises from a moment of reconciliation in these two positions. Through the depressive anxieties and the reparation processes, the infant begins to integrate the split parts of the self and others, leading to more whole and enduring object relations. This integration mirrors Hegel’s dialectical synthesis, where the contradictions inherent in each of the previous steps are resolved to achieve a more developed state of consciousness, history, and reality.[24] Here, the good and bad object are no longer perceived as separate but as parts of a complex and nuanced reality, reflecting a temporary totalisation that contains within it all previous contradictions.1 What emerges from this dynamic is not just a linear progression from one position to another, or a circular model of psychic development that embodies the movement of consciousness from part to whole and then part again. It is precisely describing a third position, a position best captured through references to a dialectical synthesis.[25]
That is why a dialectical appreciation highlights the early psychic life of the child as if it were a perpetual thesis, antithesis, and synthesis process. As we saw earlier, the contradictions of early paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions urge a richer, more realistic sense of self and object or other from a third position. This synthesis, here suggested to be a dialectical synthesis, as it occurs in the psyche, on Klein’s account of the infant, does not mean the earlier positions are left behind or rendered obsolete. Instead, like dialectical synthesis, it is a sublation—a preservation and transcendence of earlier stages—which remains present and active within the maturing psyche. This understanding suggests a psychic life that is not only constantly in flux, marked by contradictions—tensions, sexual frustrations, regressions, and primal defences—but a subject who is perpetually engaged in a dialectical process of negating, integrating and re-integrating earlier psychic positions across subjective experiences of consciousness, history, and reality.31
The life of Klein is a testament to Hegel’s adage that personal pain and the professional journey are deeply intertwined, each informing and transforming the other.28 Her biography reads not just as a series of events but as a narrative imbued with the tensions, losses and contradictions that Hegel espoused as the engine of progress in human thought and consciousness. Klein’s personal losses, which, as we saw earlier, included her brother’s death, her father’s death, her mother’s death, and her son’s death, the complexities of her married relationship, Ferenczi’s death, Abraham’s death, each serves as a thesis for her life path. These losses cannot help but function as formative forces, leading to the development of her psyche and the evolution of her ideas, pushing her into a dynamic antithesis with the prevailing psychoanalytic doctrines of her era. For this antithesis emerges from Klein’s confrontation with the then-dominant Freudian orthodoxy, challenging her to seek a deeper understanding of the unconscious processes that shaped her own and human behaviour more generally. That her life’s work was marked by a profound introspection and a relentless pursuit of knowledge, driven by the internal conflicts and emotional struggles, arose not least from her extensive first-hand experiences of loss. This intellectual opposition became the crucible from which her innovative theories were forged as she worked through her internal contradictions and sublated them into intellectual pursuits. Klein’s intellectualisation defence or synthesis, in this sense, in this sense resolves to creativity stemming from a dialectical process, manifesting in her novel contributions to psychoanalytic history. In order to live one might suppose she reconceptualised herself and generalised to the human psyche’s nature, positing it as fundamentally circular much like Hegel’s depiction of consciousness, history, and reality is circular.[26] One finds that everything will be shown to be ambivalent, but in starting the argument one just has to take something as given and proceed from there. Klein chooses as starting points dynamic contradictions in objects, the interplay of internal forces more often in conflict, always seeking resolution.29 That her theoretical innovations, which included the development of the ‘Ps-D’ model, obviously could not but be deeply rooted in her story, her history and her consciousness of that storying. Thus, Klein’s working-through is reflective of a Hegelian self-overcoming consciousness that transcends her personal struggles and takes on a much grander significance, radically reshaping the psychoanalytic understanding of human development along the way.1,5,25,[27]
Klein’s approach to psychoanalysis did more than contribute innovative ideas; she illustrates how the personal narrative could embody universal themes. Her experiences of loss and her professional challenges mirrored the Hegelian struggle, leading to a higher state of understanding that is tied to and transcends her individual circumstances as a Jewish woman in an exclusive male club. But the synthesis of Klein’s mature biography could not of course erase the pain of her personal thesis or cancel the conflicts of her professional antithesis. Instead, her history and professional life must find suitable sublation. Here the elements or parts travel into a cohesive whole, which advance psychoanalytic theory and provides a vivid illustration of the Hegelian process at work in the movement and transformation at the subjective level of an intimate connection between consciousness, history, and reality. By examining Klein’s life through the lens of Hegelian ideas, one gains a deeper appreciation for the complex interplay between an individual’s personal experiences and their professional contributions; Klein’s life and work underscore the notion that the personal is indeed universal insofar that the individual’s internal conflicts can lead to profound insights with far-reaching implications. Her biographical dialectic serves as a powerful reminder that the development of theory is not a detached intellectual exercise but a deeply human process rooted in the rich contradictions of lived experience.
The detailed clinical observation of infant behaviour, and the extrapolation of those findings to broader psychological phenomena, Klein identifies as a circular patterning within the infant psyche between states of fragmentation and integration. In the paranoid-schizoid position, as delineated by Klein, she typifies psychic fragmentation—a state where the ego, not yet fully formed, engages with a foam of partial objects and the mechanism of splitting. These ‘partial’ objects and splitting mechanics serve as primitive defences, wherein the infant’s psyche divides internal and external objects into ‘all good’ and ‘all bad’ as a means by which to manage the overwhelming anxieties of early existence. These part-objects are projected outward or introjected within, creating a fragmented worldview that is the hallmark of the paranoid-schizoid thesis as a phantasmagoria. The depressive position emerges as the antithesis to this fragmentation. Here, in the blending of a depressive and yet reparative position, the infant begins to recognise objects and other as sometimes whole and enduring, leading to a newfound concern (e.g., guilt, shame) for the object of concern’s wellbeing despite the ruthlessness from which guilt or shame originally stemmed. The awareness of the object’s constancy and the realisation that one’s own callously aggressive impulses may harm the object ushers in a period of conscientious psychic reorganisation.
This is a critical juncture in Kleinian theory, for it marks the infant’s move from the paranoid-schizoid position, characterised by division and persecution, towards the depressive position, where concern, repair, and integration begin to take root adjacent to cruelty. It is within this contradictory space that the infant grapples with depressive anxieties—mourning the actual loss of the idealised object and the feared loss or destruction at their own imaginary hand.7,29,[28],[29] As the infant navigates the tumultuous waters from paranoid-schizoid to depressive positions, one witnesses the unfolding of the maturing psyche, and it is a circular dialectical unfolding.
The integrated ‘Ps-D’ synthesis is achieved when the ego reconciles these opposing forces. This reconciled state is not simply the resolution of conflict but a new stage of development that encompasses the capacity for concern borne out of the depressive position and the defences against annihilation anxiety rooted in the paranoid-schizoid position. That the synthesis is achievable is a testament to the psyche’s capacity for growth and change, reflecting Hegel’s concept of Aufhebung, where the resolution of dialectical tension leads at once to cancellation and preservation in a higher level of complexity, understanding, and knowing.[30]
Hence Klein’s clinical observations offer a unique vantage point to understand the developmental trajectory of the human psyche. Observing infants’ interactions with caregivers and the external world gave her intuitions into the internal psychic processes she honed and sought to describe to others. Thus, during the initial stages of infancy, a child’s experiences of splitting and projection play a crucial role in their subsequent trajectory towards developing a sense of concern and the ability to make reparation. This process strongly resembles, if it is not isomorphic with, the dialectical process of realisation that occurs within the subject of psychic development. The insights gained from studying the formative processes of the psyche are of course invaluable. Clinical observations provide a unique window into the complex workings of the human mind, and how early experiences shape our adult lives. This knowledge has significant implications for the field of psychotherapy, as it helps trainee therapists to understand their client’s earliest beginnings better and maybe provide more effective treatment as a consequence. But it is by recognising the underlying mechanisms that psychological factors contribute to adult psychopathology that therapists can help their clients overcome their challenges and achieve greater mental well-being only through the illumination of accurate knowledge. Klein’s meticulous documentation of infant behaviours expanded our understanding of early psychic life and provided a framework through which to view the human capacity for circular causal change. The framework portrays a mature alignment with the Hegelian dialectic. It is notable that each step of development plays a crucial role in contributing to the progression of the whole. In the dialectical dance of the psyche, every movement, every moment of fragmentation or integration serves a purpose propelling the individual towards a growth in understanding and a more disillusioned state of being.
In the context of the Kleinian psychoanalytic framework, the concept of ambivalence is not a mere vacillation between opposing affective states. On the contrary, it is regarded as a fundamental psychic force that initiates the dialectical movement from the paranoid-schizoid to the depressive position. This process culminates in and is mirrored by the sense of ‘at-one-ness’ or dialectical synthesis of a mature ego or subject-object relation that is open to and capable of reconciliations from these two positions. Ambivalence in this context is the persistent thesis that encapsulates the inherent contradiction within the psyche—a contradiction that is not pathological in nature but a necessary condition for psychic development and growth.22
In Klein’s model, the paranoid-schizoid position is characterised by the splitting of the object and the self into good and bad as a defence against the anxieties of an unpredictable and persecutory world. This splitting is the psyche’s initial confrontation with the external reality, giving rise to the thesis within the Hegelian dialectic. In this early step, the child’s world is bifurcated into extremes, with no capacity to tolerate or integrate the ambivalence of their emotional experiences. As the child progresses to the depressive position, they begin to recognise that the loved and hated objects are essentially the same type of expression, leading to feelings of guilt and a desire for reparation. This recognition is the antithesis that challenges the initial splitting. Hence a demand for mediation of the object’s and the self’s good and bad aspects reflects a profound psychic ambivalence as origin. This recognition in no way eradicates the initial paranoid-schizoid position but necessitates engagement with it just as a dialectical counterpoint initiates the movement toward synthesis.7 Whether framed by Hegelian or Kleinian terms, synthesis is not a simple resolution or closure but a sublation—a lifting up or setting aside hard to capture from the original German term—wherein the initial positions are both negated and preserved, giving rise to a more complex and integrated position. Thus the individual learns to hold and process the ambivalence, to live with the paradox of loving and hating the same object, and to find a way to meaningfully reconcile these feelings within a coherent sense of self and other. Sensible certainty of this integration is a significant hallmark of psychic growth and maturity, albeit the development of a capacity for ambivalence is the true indicator of psychological health and resilience.5Ambivalence, thus conceived in the individual’s psychic life, must be understood as the dialectical engine of development—that it is the driver of the transformational process that allows for the movement through and beyond the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions may already be clear. Ambivalence is the psychic correlate to the Hegelian dialectic, where contradiction is not an impediment to growth but it’s very precondition.
Klein’s understanding of the importance of the facticity of psychic and inter-psychic ambivalence provides a model for psychic development that is essentially dialectical, reflecting the Hegelian view that the development of consciousness—and, by extension, the development of the psyche—is a process that discloses itself only through the persistence of contradiction.
Thus the recognition and integration of the persistence of ambivalence within the subject and the therapeutic process becomes central to the work of analysis.
The therapist’s role is to facilitate the client’s engagement with this persistence, support the navigation of these contradictory emotional states, and guide the self-overcoming process that will lead to greater psychic wholeness. This therapeutic pathway emulates the circular dialectical process and underscores the relevance of Hegelian thought to psychoanalytic practice.28 Now ambivalence once situated as the dialectical pulse of psychic life offers a rich and complex understanding of human development. But this idea challenges the simple notion of psychic health as the absence of conflict and instead posits a model in which health is characterised by the capacity to mediate, integrate, and reconcile the inherent contradictions of our emotional lives. Klein does not think so here. On her account the view from the vantage point of ambivalence as nothing other than contradiction, Klein’s psychoanalytic theory provides a profound and nuanced framework for understanding vicissitude—movement—at the kernel of the human psyche and the process of psychological development.
A robust academic discourse necessitates a thorough engagement with counterarguments. To meet this challenge, critiques of Klein’s ‘Ps-D’ model often pivot around the accusation of determinism embedded within its structure and an overemphasis on the pre-oedipal psychic life of infant development. Such critiques suggest that Klein’s model potentially negates the plasticity and ongoing developmental potential inherent within the human psyche. Moreover, the critics propose that the model’s deterministic bent may overshadow the nuances of later life experiences and the possibility of continued psychic change.27
To mount a defence of Klein’s ‘Ps-D’ model from a Hegelian dialectical perspective, one should first appreciate the dialectical nature of theory development itself. Much like consciousness in Hegel’s philosophy, theories do not emerge fully formed; they are refined through addressing contradictions and integrating new understandings. Hence the ‘Ps-D’ model can be seen not as a concretised edifice but as a living framework subject to revision and enrichment through its encounter with alternative perspectives and antitheses. Critiques concerning determinism within the ‘Ps-D’ model can be addressed by underscoring the inherent dynamism that Klein ascribes to the internal world. For instance, Klein’s recognition of the ‘epistemophilic instinct’ underscores a lifelong drive for knowledge and understanding, suggesting an ongoing capacity for psychic evolution well beyond the early years.34 That this instinct may echo the Hegelian ‘Geist‘, as Spirit or Mind, which is marked by a restless progression towards self-realisation and truth is consequential but far from established. Thus, the ‘Ps-D’ model does not prescribe a fixed psychic telos but acknowledges a fluid, ongoing dialectical process of psychic negotiation and reconfiguration.5
A Hegelian framework offers a compelling defence for the critique of overemphasis on early development. Hegel’s dialectic, which is teleological in nature, posits that the seeds of the end state—’the absolute idea‘ or ‘absolute knowledge‘—are present from the beginning, but they unfold over time through a process of development that is responsive to and shaped by the totality of one’s historical and cultural context. Similarly, the ‘Ps-D’ model does not negate the influence of later experiences but positions early psychic life as foundational to the structure upon which later experiences build and transform the psyche. Klein herself acknowledged that the depressive position is never fully resolved but is instead revisited throughout life, with each encounter fostering deeper integration and sophistication of the self.[31] This dynamic revisiting aligns once again with the Hegelian notion of ‘Aufhebung‘ or sublation, where earlier developmental stages are not superfluous but are instead elevated and integrated into higher levels of complexity. Hence the ‘Ps-D’ model accommodates the ongoing dialectical interplay between past and present psychic configurations, emphasising a historically deep and active continuity informing not just pathologies but the whole lifecycle.
Incorporating these counterarguments into the ongoing evolution of the Kleinian orientation to psychoanalytic theory serves to enhance the richness and applicability of the ‘Ps-D’ model. Far from calcifying it into dogma, addressing these critiques in the spirit of dialectical thinking propels the theory forward, reflecting the Hegelian process where contradiction and resolution drive the development of knowledge and reality. Thus, the ‘Ps-D’ model stands as a testament to the living, dynamic nature of psychoanalytic knowledge, which, like Hegel’s philosophy, is ever-unfolding and self-correcting.6,34
The speculative introduction of a dialectical reading into the reinterpretation of Klein’s ‘Ps-D’ model offers a tantalisingly transformative lens through which to view anew the psychoanalytic therapeutic process. In this context, the therapeutic space becomes a microcosm for circular dialectical unfolding, an iterative loop where the compounded dance of psychic elements—reflective of the Hegelian development of Kantian motifs: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis—plays out in the intimate exchange between clinician and client. Here, the Hegelian process is not abstract but alive, operationalised within the dyadic interaction, inviting a mutual recognition of a central contradiction between subject and other that becomes the re-enacted antagonist for psychic development and the integrative conduit that witnesses change. According to Hegel, recognition is not a mere acknowledgement of another’s existence; it is a profound political realisation of the other as an essential constitutive part of one’s identity and consciousness, representing an autonomous and rational being deserving of respect and trust. In the analytic dyad, this recognition translates into the clinician’s empathic attunement (the site of the ideal of ‘at-one-ness’) to the client’s internal world—their fears, desires, and conflicts—and the client’s growing acknowledgement of the clinician as someone separate yet intimately connected in trust. Here this dynamic interplay generates an inter-psychic or relational space where the internal contradictions of the client—the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, the consciousness and unconsciousness, the story told and the story lived—can be safely explored and worked through step by step. The paranoid-schizoid position, with its fragmentation and projective mechanisms, represents the thesis within this therapeutic dialectic. It is the initial state of defence against psychic pain, where parts of the self and the object world are split into good and bad, ideal and persecutory. This position manifests in the transference within the therapeutic setting as dichotomous perceptions of the clinician and the external world. The depressive position then serves as the antithesis, where the client begins to integrate these split representations, confronting the ambivalence that such integration instantiates and necessitates.
Thus, the clinician’s role in this dialectical progression is pivotal insofar as their acceptance of ambivalence or contradiction at once defines and limits any position of congruence from which the outcome will be cast and then tried.
By containing and interpreting the varied projections from the paranoid-schizoid position, the clinician facilitates the emergence of depressive anxiety in the form of transference neuroses or containment, where the client must reckon with the destructive aspects of their own psyche and the reality of the other as a partial or whole, multifaceted being.24 Through the clinician’s sustained presence and relational interventions, dialectic syntheses can begin to form—a new psychic position that reconciles the rigid dichotomies (i.e., good and bad) of the paranoid-schizoid position with the painful complexities of the depressive position (guilt, sexual frustration, shame, etc.). As previously pointed up, in Hegelian terms, this synthesis does not obliterate the preceding standard but rather saturates that standard with counterfactuals that lift off limits to a higher order of appreciation. In psychoanalytic therapy, this equates ‘lifting’ to the development of a more nuanced and resilient self that may withstand the vicissitudes of life without resorting to primitive or manic defences. Hence, it is a realised self that recognises its destructive capacities but also finds a way to live with them in a manner that is creative and life-affirming. It is that the internal persecutor must be recognised as an aspect of the self, and the lost ideal is adequately mourned, which then allows for the possibility of reparation and growth.
The implications of this Hegelian-influenced dialectical process are no more profound to the experienced clinician than is the surprising reliability of the beneficial effectiveness of this relational approach to the process of tension and release.
The dialectic approach not only reconceptualises the aim and process of psychoanalytic therapy but also aligns the therapeutic pathway within a broader philosophical understanding of general consciousness and human development, and individual consciousness and development. The therapeutic process, henceforward, becomes an enactment of the dialectical development of the mind, as posited by Hegel as Geist, (Spirit or Mind) playing out within the individual psyche. C. Fred Alford’s (1989) work on the intersection of critical social theory and Kleinian psychoanalysis underscores the utility of such a dialectical approach in clinical practice. By recognising the analytic process as dialectical, we can appreciate the therapeutic space as one where the social world intersects with the internal world, where broader cultural and existential dilemmas become personalised and psychically instantiated. The therapeutic space, infused with a dialectic process, invites a deeper engagement with the self’s inherent contradictions and knowledge of those contradictions. It is a space where the individual’s fragmented self undergoes a process of recognition, confrontation, and synthesis, mirroring the dialectical circularity of consciousness that Hegel elucidated, albeit with infamous inelegance.
In the landscape of contemporary psychoanalytic discourse, the pertinence of Klein’s ‘Ps-D’ model continues to manifest with compelling resonance. A Hegelian reading of Klein’s work transcends a historical lens, providing a vital perspective on psychic development’s dynamic and self-corrective nature. This reading offers not merely a retrospective appreciation of ambivalent origination but a teleological model equipped to grapple with the intricacies of the modern psyche. This model’s historical grounding ensures its foundational stability, while its capacity to adapt and interpret the psychological undercurrents of contemporary life demonstrates its progressive vision. The relational landscape has been profoundly influenced by societal changes, technological advancements, and evolving cultural narratives. But through a dialectical interpretation, Klein’s ‘Ps-D’ model becomes a versatile tool for understanding such changes. In the dialectical synthesis, thesis and antithesis are not endpoints but moments in a continuum always already leading to realisation. Similarly, Klein’s model suggests that the psyche is never static but evolves through its contradictory partial objects toward a newly reconciled state prior to new tensions.
As modern life presents new forms of psychic conflict and fragmentation, Klein’s model offers a framework for understanding these phenomena as a precondition of the individual’s ongoing development. The ‘Ps-D’ model may usefully confront the contemporary issue of self-identity in the digital age, where the boundaries between the self and the other are increasingly blurred. The paranoid-schizoid position reflects the contemporary experience of fragmentation, where individuals navigate multiple personas and platforms, leading to a diffusion of identity. In contrast, the depressive position resonates with the quest for authenticity and integration in an interconnected and disconnected world. Hence, the ‘Ps-D’ model provides a psychoanalytic interpretation of the challenges the modern individual faces in maintaining a coherent sense of self amidst the multiplicity of modern life. Moreover, the ‘Ps-D’ position model addresses the modern therapeutic encounter, which must now contend with the rapid pace of life and the quest for immediate gratification and avoidances of immediate responsibility. The dialectical process emphasises the importance of enduring the tension between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, resisting the temptation for quick resolutions, and allowing for the emergent release of a synthesised acceptance of one’s psychic reality.5
This approach challenges the contemporary propensity for fast solution-focused thinking, advocating instead for a slower process-oriented containing reflective on the dialectical nature of consciousness and realisation of that consciousness. In the context of current debates in depth-psychology, Klein’s position model serves as a punctuating counterpoint to the trend toward manualised therapies, reaffirming the value of exploring the depth, ambivalence, and complexity of realisation or becoming at the core of the human psyche. Hence through its dialectical structure, the ‘Ps-D’ model encourages a nuanced understanding of contradictory psychic phenomena, recognising the importance of history, conflict, and resolution in individual development. This perspective is crucial in an era that often prioritises symptom relief over exploratory depth.
What is more the ‘Ps-D’ model’s relevance is underscored in its capacity to encompass diverse and multicultural experiences. This involves recognising the universality of psychic development while also accommodating the particularities of individual and cultural narratives. This dialectical flexibility makes Klein’s model particularly useful in contemporary practice, which increasingly recognises the need for culturally sensitive and adaptable frameworks.[32] Hence the ‘Ps-D’ position model, interpreted through the dialectic lens, provides a dialogical and historical grounding to modern psychoanalytic discourse. Thus, offering a historically informed yet dynamically adaptable framework that captures the essence of psychic development in the modern world unable or unwilling to grasp the extent of the nettle of ambivalence. As society continues to evolve and present new psychological challenges, Klein’s ‘Ps-D’ position model stands as a testament to the enduring need for psychoanalytic thought that reflects its time and preconditions while also anticipating future developments with a pendulum’s regularity and predictability.
As we synthesise the threads of Klein’s psychoanalytic theories through the warp and weft of dialectic thinking, Klein transcends further in her role as a radical developer of psychoanalytic thought. With resounding clarity, she emerges as a historical dialectician whose ‘Ps-D’ model illustrates a deeply structured and philosophically profound account of psychic development. This alignment not only underscores the intrinsic value of her contributions but also elevates her status within both psychoanalytic and philosophical domains as a matriarch in a gestalt of patriarchy.
Within her time, Klein transcended the traditional approach that views her or her works as linear, dualist, idiosyncratic, eccentric, or personally as ‘a dotty woman.’[33] Instead, Klein’s life and work embody a dialectical spirit borne from European thought in advance of, during, and long after La Belle Epoque that had been eviscerated by the Great War. This combination of optimism and cultural advancement coupled with shock and desolation are surely suggestive that each step or position of her development—each thesis and antithesis—contained within itself at once the seeds of her own negation and transcendence. Klein’s perhaps finest and certainly most radical contribution, the paranoid-schizoid position, for example, is fraught with fragmentation and ripe with paranoia. So too the depressive position, with its capacity for concern and reparation, which are not endpoints but rather crucial moments in the circular unfolding of a dialectical psyche.
Klein’s approach is identical to Freud’s insofar as both are at pains to articulate that the reconciliation of contradiction does not eliminate the tensions and conflicts inherent to each but transforms them into a synthesis or whole greater than the sum of its parts.[34]
That this synthesis is never a static resolution but a dynamic recalibration that preserves the complexity and contradictions of earlier psychic states, allows for an ever-more nuanced understanding of self and other, self and object. In showing the human psyche undergoes a perpetual process of self-evolution, characterised by introspective dialogue and reconfiguration, Klein is authentically articulating her consciousness and history through realised words and actions. And that this process bears striking resemblance to Hegel’s concept of Geist or Spirit or Mind, which achieves self-realisation through self-manifestation, negation of negation, and self-transcendence, already carries clues to support here what has been said. The implications for psychoanalytic theory and practice are numerous when considering Klein’s approach through the lens and scope of the dialectic.
Hence one is compelled to re-examine at least the relational therapeutic practice proposed by Klein as an enactment of a particular dialectical synthesis, where the clinician and client collaborate in a mutuality of the recognition of contradiction and thus ambivalence that leads to contradistinction and the working through of psychic conflict. That this process mirrors the Hegelian dialectic, where self-consciousness arises not in isolation but through the mediation of the other, is unsurprising as most will no doubt have made this connection for themselves. Hence, this is how the therapeutic encounter became a clinical encounter at all, as the site where the psychic equivalents of contradiction—thesis, antithesis, and synthesis—are actively negotiated and reconstituted as ambivalence—tension, release, and realisation.
Moreover, a dialectical perspective opens new avenues for understanding and engagement within Kleinian psychoanalytic theory and practice. But this perspective also challenges us to move beyond mere pathologisation of ambivalence and contradiction to see these as necessary preconditions of psychic growth. That perspective invites us to envision a psychoanalytic practice that not only heals but also philosophically informs, enriches, and is, in turn, enriched by the individuals it serves. Hence when viewed as an intuitive dialectician, Klein provides a transformative framework that redefines the contours of psychoanalytic thought. Her model, suffused with the standard of the dialectical process, offers a compelling and philosophically rich pathway for better understanding the human psyche.[35]
Thus Ps-D beckons us to adopt a dialectical perspective in our engagement with Kleinian psychoanalysis, one that honours the dynamic circular interplay of psychic forces and the ongoing evolution of the self as predicated upon contradiction termed ambivalence. Already it will be clear that this perspective toward ambivalence not only enhances the therapeutic pathway but also contributes to the broader discourse of psychoanalysis as an applied discipline that continually redefines its relevance not through linear or dualist sensibilities but by an intuitive or otherwise adoption of dialectic.
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I would like to dedicate this paper with love to my friend and fellow sherpa, Howard Covitz. I also thank Heward Wilkinson for his kind support and helpful comments in the draft stages. My heartfelt thanks go to Jeff Cole for his tireless proofreading, comments, suggestions, and questions, of which I have perhaps not taken sufficient account.
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By Paul Wadey
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
[1] Freud, S. (1924c) ‘The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis’ in Sigmund Freud, (ed. Freud, A. 1986) The Essentials of Psycho-Analysis, p.572.
[2] Greenberg, J.R. & Mitchell, S.A. (1983). Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory. Harvard University Press. p.121.
[3] Segal, H. (1973) Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein, p. ix.
[4] Please see Meltzer, D. (1978). The Kleinian development: Part II. Clunie Press.
[5] Please see Klein, M. (1935). A contribution to the psychogenesis of manic-depressive states. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 16, 145-174.
[6] Rosenfeld, H. (1952) ‘Psycho-Analysis of the Super-Ego Conflict in an acute schizophrenic’ in Klein, M., Heimann, P. & Money-Kyrle, R.E. (eds. 1955), New Directions in Psycho-Analysis; The Significance of Infant Conflict in the Pattern of Adult Behaviour, p.186.
[7] Pleaase see Groom, W. (1986) Forrest Gump, Black Swan Books: London.
[8] Riviere, J. (1952) ‘The Unconscious Phantasy of an Inner World reflected in literature’ in Klein, M., Heimann, P. & Money-Kyrle, R.E. (eds. 1955), New Directions in Psycho-Analysis; The Significance of Infant Conflict in the Pattern of Adult Behaviour, p.360.
[9] Freud, S. (1913) ‘The Return of Totemism in Childhood’, Totem and Taboo, p.157.
[10] Klein, M. (1952) ‘On Identification’ in Klein, M., Heimann, P. & Money-Kyrle, R.E. (eds. 1955), New Directions in Psycho-Analysis; The Significance of Infant Conflict in the Pattern of Adult Behaviour, p.312.
[11] ibid., p.313.
[12] Segal, H. (1973) p.24.
[13] Segal, H. (1973) p.25.
[14] Winnicott, D.W. (1962) ‘On the Kleinian Contribution’ in Winnicott, D.W. (1984), The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, p.177.
[15] Klein, M. ‘The Psycho-Analytic Play Technique: its history and significance’ in Klein, M., Heimann, P. & Money-Kyrle, R.E. (eds. 1955), New Directions in Psycho-Analysis; The Significance of Infant Conflict in the Pattern of Adult Behaviour, p.21.
[16] Please see Mitchell, S. A., & Black, M. J. (1995). Freud and Beyond: A History of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought. Basic Books.
[17] ibid., p.26.
[18] Rosenfeld, H. (1952) ‘Psycho-Analysis of the Super-Ego Conflict in an acute schizophrenic’ in Klein, M., Heimann, P. & Money-Kyrle, R.E. (eds. 1955), New Directions in Psycho-Analysis; The Significance of Infant Conflict in the Pattern of Adult Behaviour, p.186.
[19] Please see Hegel, G. W. F. (1977). Phenomenology of Spirit (A. V. Miller, Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1807).
[20] Kristeva, J. (2001). Melanie Klein. Columbia University Press. p.13
[21] Taylor, C. (1975). Hegel. Cambridge University Press. p.131
[22] Please see Bion, W. (1962a). A theory of thinking. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. 43:306-10. See also Bion, W. (1962b). Learning from Experience. Heinemann.
[23] Please see Meltzer, D. (1987). Studies in Extended Metapsychology. Clunie.
[24] Rustin, M. (1991). The Good Society and the Inner World: Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Culture. Verso. pp. 38-39.
[25] Please see Britton, R. (1989). The missing link: Parental sexuality in the Oedipus complex. In J. Steiner (Ed.), The Oedipus Complex Today: Clinical Implications. Karnac Books.
[26] Please see Alford, C. F. (1989). Melanie Klein and Critical Social Theory: An Account of Politics, Art, and Reason Based on Her Psychoanalytic Theory. Yale University Press.
[27] Please see Grosskurth, P. (1986). Melanie Klein: Her World and Her Work. Harvard University Press.
[28] Hinshelwood, R. D. (1989). A Dictionary of Kleinian Thought. Free Association Books. p.218
[29] Please see Klein, M. (1935). A contribution to the psychogenesis of manic-depressive states. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 16, 145-174.
[30] Taylor, C. (1975). Hegel. Cambridge University Press. p. xi
[31] Please see Klein, M. (1940). Mourning and its relation to manic-depressive states. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. 21: 125-53.
[32] Please see Rustin, M. (2001) Reason and Unreason: Psychoanalysis, Since and Politics. Continuum.
[33] Alix Strachey’s famous quote. In Grosskurth, P. (1986). Melanie Klein: Her World and Her Work. Harvard University Press.
[34] Please see Klein, M. (1975). The Writings of Melanie Klein (Vol. 1-4). Hogarth Press.
[35] Knowledge is the achievement of a realisation of a standard. ‘The test is not only a test of knowledge’ Hegel writes ‘but also of its standard.’ 1977. p.73.
Reflections from a therapy room 
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