ABSTRACT
According to Klein, the tiny infant does not have a concept of its mother as a whole person. In the first place, the infant relates only to her breast. In the second place, even the breast is experienced as two distinct entities: the bad (persecutory) breast and the good (nurturing) breast. In Kleinian jargon, one says that the tiny infant relates only to "part objects". Klein believed that the infant struggles to get the "good" part objects inside of itself and to expel or fend off the "bad" part objects. When the baby imagines that it has taken a part object inside itself ("introjected" it), this is called an "internal object". According to Klein, infants pass from the paranoid-schizoid to the depressive position. Depressive anxiety can be fended off by paranoid defences: a regression to the paranoid-schizoid mode of splitting and projection.
