ABSTRACT

In this chapter, I first introduce the Kleinian/Bionian perspective. Klein augmented Freud’s ideas about unconscious motivations that drive behavior by recognizing the interpersonal needs and desires also at play. Her conjectures about the processes at play in early development and recognition of early hostility and aggression led to the delineation of concepts such as splitting and projective identification that have become an integral part of the larger psychoanalytic canon. Klein’s ideas were informed by her work with young children whose development had been waylaid, leaving them enacting largely unsymbolized experiences. Klein’s and Bion’s attempts to elucidate such inchoate meanings have important ramifications for our work with adults as well. Contemporary Kleinians have offered rich and useful ways of looking at the ubiquity of transference in the clinical encounter. Their metaphors help to highlight primary defenses and to suggest ways of working with those defenses as they manifest in the treatment. Key concepts include symbolization and dreaming; paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions; the ubiquity and clinical utility of transference and countertransference; projective identification; and defensive organizations. Brief examples are offered to help the reader imagine how to apply these concepts in clinical work.