0.4 Neo-freudian perspectives on personality  (Page 14/28)

We get to look upon the child’s fear of being devoured, or cut up, or torn to pieces, or its terror of being surrounded and pursued by menacing figures, as a regular component of its mental life; and we know that the man-eating wolf, the fire-spewing dragon, and all the evil monsters out of myths and fairy stories flourish and exert their unconscious influence in the fantasy of each individual child, and it feels itself persecuted and threatened by those evil shapes. (pgs. 254-255; Klein, 1930/1973)

Not only are such early childhood challenges frightening for individuals, Klein also believed that all attempts to improve humanity as a whole have failed because no one has understood “the full depth and vigor” of the aggressive instincts in each person. Klein believed that psychoanalysis could help both individuals and all humanity by alleviating the anxiety caused by the hatred and fear that she proposed all children experience during their psychodynamic development (Klein, 1930/1973). And so, Klein expressed the following desire for psychoanalysis:

…I hope, child analysis will become as much a part of every person’s upbringing as school education is now. Then, perhaps, that hostile attitude, springing from fear and suspicion, which is latent more or less strongly in each human being, and which intensifies a hundredfold in him every impulse of destruction, will give way to kindlier and more trustful feelings toward his fellow men, and people may inhabit the world together in greater peace and goodwill than they do now. (pgs. 267-268; Klein, 1930/1973).

Donald W. Winnicott

Anna Freud and Melanie Klein represent two extremes in the debate over the development of personality in childhood and how psychoanalysis can help to understand that development and treat psychological disorders. Anna Freud strictly adhered to her father’s theory, believing that young children lacked the psychological development necessary for participating fully in adult-like psychoanalysis. Klein, on the other hand, considered children quite advanced at birth, with the death-instinct and its aggressive impulses being every bit as important as Eros and the libido. In contrast to these extremes, an independent school of object relations theorists developed with more moderate views. Donald Winnicott was one of the most influential of these more moderate theorists, as were Margaret Mahler and Heinz Kohut. We will take a look at some of the ideas of Mahler and Kohut in the next section.

Winnicott (1896-1971) was a pediatrician before becoming an analyst, so he brought a wealth of experience in observing mother-infant interactions to psychoanalysis. Already well respected for his medical treatment of children, Winnicott became increasingly interested in their emotional disorders. So, he joined a group of psychoanalysts being formed in London under the guidance of Sigmund Freud (Winnicott, Shepherd,&Davis, 1986). His first analyst was James Strachey, the man responsible for translating much of Freud’s work into English and who was also instrumental in bringing Klein to England. Winnicott continued his analysis with Joan Riviere, one of Klein’s closest colleagues, and he was eventually supervised by Klein herself (Mitchell&Black, 1995). Due to his prior experience and independent spirit, however, he developed his own theories separately from those of Klein.