Depressive position

In Psychoanalysis, the depressive position is a phase occurring about the fourth month of life of the infant. It was described by Melanie Klein.

Introduction

The depressive position is one important moment of the maturation of the Me in the young child without language, or Infans. Causes so much external which internal can activate it.

The access to the depressive position, initially, is capacity to surmount the paranoid-schizoid Position, to which the features are close to the psychosis. The mental operation of the baby, then comparable with a psychosis, becomes close to observable features in the depression - although the comparison of pathological with the normal development remains limited. The concern of the infant, who according to this theory passes from one position to the other, changes then radically.

Concretely, the infant begins with reconnaïtre his mother. But soon, he will recognize various members of his entourage, like his father. This recognition of the person is a point of importance, but the depressive position rather studies the aspect intrapsychic of this recognition, the dynamics which is associated for him and which constitutes a mental attitude appearing all the life, but more particularly in the depressive episodes.

Coarsely, a first identity of the infant is constituted; the theoretical approach will thus connect recognition of the other and recognition of oneself.

Development of the concept

Sigmund Freud formulated already some formulations as for the Mélancolie, in Deuil and melancholy . Karl Abraham looks further into the study and considered a primary Dépression of it.

Melanie Klein introduces the concept of depressive position in 1934. It crossed itself the mourning of one of her children. It will describe, eight years afterwards, a paranoid-schizoid Position earlier still, but the two positions will remain in the work of Melanie Klein of the central concepts.

Métapsychologie kleinienne of the depressive position

If she studies the psychic life earliest, Klein is not interested however in the relation mother-child as such. It is a question well of studying the psychical reality, in the infant.

Characteristics

The access to the depressive position implies the possibility of the development of an operation integrated starting from the paranoid position precisely defined by a strong fragmentation of the psychic life.

The mother will thus be recognized. The Splitting of the object is softened: where there were a good center and a bad center, according to the diagram of the partial Objet, the baby starts to integrate his mother like a person into the various aspects, and in particular at the same time satisfactory and frustrating, reassuring and worrying, sometimes presents and sometimes goes away. These various facets of the object less and less have as a consequence cleavage, the segmentation of the object, the person of the mother, in thousand inassimilable pieces. There is thus access to the Object-relationship suitable for the total Objet.

In the paranoid position, there is very strong identification with the ideal object. This identification gratifiante, reassuring, allows thereafter that the projection the bad one outside, the attribution of harmful with the outside, with the environment, decreases. The me-pleasure (as described by Freud) allows, by the answer which it brings to the state of distress, to tolerate hostile Pulsion S like his. There is in fact reduction of the parcelling out of the identity of the infant: the Splitting of the ego decreases.

The Me, which existed until there in a very antiquated form, suffers from less cleavages. Ego itself proves at the same time source of satisfaction and distress: the Splitting of the ego is reduced. Just as projection weakens, the Introjection, assimilation of a feature hitherto a41dernier $c-b1, e,10 $c-b26 ce $c-b16 $c-b43, bn,84 perceived with the outside like oneself, becomes more important. This psychic attitude corresponds to a greater concern for the external reality, which appears like invaluable.

These mechanisms are thus a recognition of the dependence. The mother is distinguished like object from attachment. If the anguish were, in the paranoid-schizoid Position, of nature psychotic (Angoisse of dead, persecution), it changes. The access to the Ambivalence, is the capacity to recognize in oneself the bad tendencies, as well as the access to the recognition of the dependence to the mother, modify the nature of the anguish, which is colored of a depressive tonality. The depressive Angoisse is feared to kill the object, to lose it.

This coloring of the anguish is a key for which wants to include/understand defenses related to the depressive position. It should again be noted that this position is not only one stage but well an attitude presents the life during, since the depressive anguish remains.

Defenses

Because of fear which the object is not lost, defenses vis-a-vis the depressive position are specific to this process. The mechanisms of defense are of two types: repair and defense maniac.

It should however be considered that if the depressive position is defined in opposition to the earlier stage, the maturation of Ego, almost synonymous with a constitution of this intance psychic, by a mourning, indicates a broad range of the study of these defenses. The depressive position would be in itself a defense…

Repair

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Defenses maniacs

Whereas the paranoid position points out the schizophrenic and paranoiac psychoses, this type of defense shows it parallel between an infantile position and the maniaco-depressive Psychose.

Depressive position and Oedipus

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Of a relation to a use of the object

Where Freud noted already that the object is born in hatred, Donald Winnicott will take again the theory of Melanie Klein with a comprehension which is clean for him. It should be noted that Winnicott does not consider so much a death instinct. At Klein, this impulse is fundamental.

But Winnicott chooses to take again the term of Object-relationship in the direction of a first report/ratio to others, in which precisely the statute of the other is not recognized. The object is not designed in its own life, which corresponds more or less to the idea that Klein of a difficult development of a total object proposes.

For Winnicott, the object-relationship can lead only if hatred leads the Infans to fear not to have damaged the object. It is necessary that hatred brings to think that the object could not survive, that it disappeared, that hatred has it achevé.
Then only it will be possible to note that the other returns, made return, that it thus belongs to external reality and that he has his life; the object appears solid and independent then. It is what can lead the child to consider an object usable, an object uses which is solid and satisfactory; what Winnicott calls the passage of the object-relationship to the use of the object.
One should not here see the term of use of the object, where the object is somebody, like negative: it is rather a question of showing in what the other can emerge in all its significance. In a sentence, the other takes all its direction because of to have survived the hatred which is carried to him.

The depressive position like first position?

For Donald Meltzer, the depressive position does not make following the paranoid-schizoid Position. It is first. The depressive position implies a psychic difficulty such as it will cause defenses which will make the paranoid position; only after these mechanisms will be able to take less violent forms and to lead to more elaborate symptoms.

That the depressive position is first or not, the teaching of Meltzer is that of a psychic drama; the depressive position should not be presented like an easy outcome of a former position but well in the form of a particularly unbearable unit. The stake is well to release the fundamental aspect of this psychic position.

References

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