ABSTRACT
Whereas Fairbairn proposed a differentiated psychic structure, that of Klein remained amorphous (Greenberg and Mitchell, 1983), and some would say chaotic. Although chaos may at times authentically be reflective of an inner psychic life in process, a theory of psychic phenomenology requires something more. Such a theory needs to bridge the gaps between individuals and to point out common internal threads that effect behavior, while also identifying behavior that transforms simple reenactment into meaningful experience. A theory of psychic structure must accompany clinical observation and psychic phenomenology. We may clinically observe such psychic structure as, for example, in defense maneuvers. I find Fairbairn most helpful here. But I suggest that we expand his metapsychology of real trauma by substituting Klein's phenomenology of real guilt (existential guilt, guilt due to hurting the other in reality, not just fantasy), for the spurious guilt depicted in Fairbairn's description of moral defense. In Fairbairn's moral defense, the child who blames himself for being bad and provoking the abuse or neglect of an inadequate or “bad object” real parent continues throughout his life to enact a defensive self-blame in order to ward off awareness of his parents' true nature. In this way, the child protects his/her self from the tremendous sense of vulnerability that awareness engenders. Such self-blame is not guilt in the sense that Klein used the term. Klein spoke of our inner pain created by realizing our own actual aggression against another, an “other” who we always associated unconsciously with the primal mother, the one we need and love within the internal world. Klein opens doors to human morality, and to the visceral feeling of human morality in the heart, where we experience it as grief.
