Freud and Klein

1. Freud: human beings are born at odds with their environment

a. Individual’s egoistic, instinctual nature necessitate control by the group, society.

b. Childhood entails socialization, channeling of impulses into socially acceptable forms of living.

c. Contemporary Psa schools see the person, infant, as less alien to society, more adapted to the world.

2. Klein: bridge between Freud and contemporary object relations theory.

a. Freud comes to London in 1938. Late 20’s: Clash with more traditional Freudian, division into two schools, the Viennese and the London. Later a third group called the “Independent School.”

b. Anna Freud: children’s egos are too weak, cannot handle interpretation of instinctual conflict

c. Klein believed that children could be analyzed by interpreting their play like one interprets free association of an adult.

3. Klein underscored importance of instinctual life but reinterpreted basic Freudian concepts, place aggression more prominently.

a. Freud: neurotic conflict entails secrets and self-deception, core of the conflict formed in culmination of infantile sexual life, the oedipal phase. Child struggles with intense and dangerous wishes. Klein interested in earlier processes;

b. Klein thought that Freud’s ideas about older children apply to younger ones, even infants. Fantasies of incestuous union and terrifying self-punishments are present from very early one, in more primitive, frightening forms.

c. Freud worked with adults, Klein with children, often severely disturbed

4. For Freud: psyche as stable and coherent structures. Bestial wishes, fears of retribution, guilt.

For Klein: psyche continuously changing, array of primitive, fantasy images, fears. Psychotic anxieties. Terrors of annihilation (paranoid anxiety) and utter abandonment (depressive anxiety).