ABSTRACT
Melanie Klein’s phenomenology of the paranoid–schizoid and depressive positions is a developmental as well as a clinical theory. For Klein, movements from the paranoid–schizoid to the depressive position state of mind are fundamental to primary developmental growth in self-integration, as well as the driving force of a continuing psychic evolution in an individual’s way of thinking that takes place over the course of a lifetime. Klein wrote of the growth of self-integration through the depressive position, growth through tolerance for ambivalence. She also wrote about the conscious experiencing of one’s own hostile aggression, when guilty of assaulting connections with another who represents the primary love object. Joan Riviere used Klein’s theory of reparation to understand the unconscious pressures lying behind the negative therapeutic reactions in manic depression and other seriously disturbed patients. Klein always addressed psychic loss as being accompanied by aggression that creates guilt.
