The Paranoid-Schizoid and Depressive Positions in the Psychoanalytic theory of Melanie Klein.

Melanie Klein (1882-1960) came to England in the late 1920’s and helped found the Object-
Relations School of Psychoanalysis. In her pioneering work on child analysis, she formulated two very
early developmental positions, through which infants pass and which remain unconsciously active
within the adult psyche. Klein was trying to understand the earliest ego development of an individual
personality and in so doing outlined what she termed the Paranoid-Schizoid Position and the
Depressive Position of psychical orientation. The points at which Klein refers to these two positions in
her writings are countless. For this essay therefore, I draw on two of her papers in which the two
psychical positions are described in detail, her 1935 paper A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of
Manic-Depressive States, where she first described the depressive position and her 1946 paper Notes on
Some Schizoid Mechanisms where she describes the paranoid-schizoid position. In this short essay, I
can only outline these positions, which can of course be studied in a lot more depth and with much
wider scope.

For Klein the two positions become apparent during the first year of life with the paranoid-
schizoid position preceding the depressive position, but both can be reactivated and present at any time
through childhood and in adult life. Klein thought of a ‘position’ as a constellation or set of psychical
phenomena and functions (instincts, anxieties, thoughts, feelings, defences, fantasies, object relations,
etc.) potentially present at any time in the here and now, “a ‘position’ is an always available state, not
something one passes through.”(1) In the paranoid-schizoid position, the main characteristics are
splitting, projection, identification, idealisation, omnipotence, denial and paranoid anxiety i.e.
persecution. While in the depressive position, Klein describes psychical processes such as introjection,
ambivalence, depressive anxiety i.e. guilt, concern, reality testing, reparation and symbolism. Built
around these core anxieties, feelings, defences, phantasies and object relations, the two positions imply
differences in the state of ego disintegration and/or integration, ego weakness/fragmentation and ego
strength/structure. The state (i.e. size, shape, pace, temperature, flexibility, colour, odour, etc.) of an
individual’s ego, differs according to their innate capacity to tolerate the conflict between the paranoid-
schizoid and depressive psychical positions. Klein thought that individuals have certain inborn
characteristics, which determine the way they respond and relate to their self, to others and the world.

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Put another way, you could say that an individual’s way of handling their own instincts and feelings,
particularly feelings of anxiety and guilt, determines and defines their psychical position. Had time
constraints allowed, closer attention to Klein’s terminology would have included a contrast of her use
of the term position, with the less topographical and more medical term condition and the theoretical
implications to which such terminology leads.

Klein saw that at the beginning of life, an infant is utterly vulnerable and helpless, needs total care
and has a very low toleration of hunger, frustration and pain. As yet, unable to contain intense instincts
and feelings, the infant psychically splits into a good part kept within and a bad part which is denied
and projected outwards into its mother. The good mother who comforts and gratifies the infant is
introjected, internalized, idealized and retained within the psyche as a model of a good object, while the
absent, neglectful and frustrating mother is perceived as a bad persecutor. These very early internal
unconscious imagos i.e. emotionally charged phantasy images of the primary objects of life, are much
more exaggerated than the reality of parents. If the mother in reality is exceptionally rejecting and
aggressive, then any innate thanatic (death oriented) characteristics in the infant, are reflected, repeated,
reinforced and enhanced in their developing personality. Or if the mother is exceptionally loving, kind
and caring and the infant has similar inborn erotic character traits, these are confirmed and reinforced.

However, complications and difficulties arise when an infant’s own individual inherent character
traits are denied and frustrated, by the reality of parents whose own ego may not have fully developed,
because it was insufficiently mirrored by their parents in early life and by others in society in adult life.
In these circumstances, the ‘I am’ that is the ego cannot develop without recognition from the primary
Other. These remarks about ego psychology take me away from Kleinian Object Relations. Melanie
Klein’s particular contribution to Psychoanalytic psychology theory, was to highlight the parallel
developmental processes, of an inner phantasy world and relations with others in an external world.
Two parallel developmental processes, one instinctual, emotional and phantastical inner psychical
process and one outer, behavioural and relational process, happening together in conjunction and
effecting each other’s development. For example, at the same time, an infant establishes relations
between its life instinct e.g. hunger and the external supply of food i.e. its mother’s feeding breast, or

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another example, it establishes relations between its death instinct and the external world i.e. its
helplessness and its mother’s absence.

Klein became known for drawing attention to the operation of destructive instincts, which she
saw as very strong in the first months of life. Freud was known to be a Dualist and Klein chose to
develop his Instinct Theory. Other Psychoanalytic theorists have focused on other areas of Freud’s
Collected Works and have developed his ideas in completely different directions. Psychoanalytically
we could argue of course, that an individual’s theoretical work, or any work for that matter, reflects
their innate character traits and also the life and death experiences that have shaped them. For Klein,
an infant’s death instincts, together with neglect and deprivation by primary carer in the environment,
make the infant feel very anxious and afraid. Faced with this anxiety and fear, the infant tries to cope
or defend itself by deflecting destructive feelings. In self-protection it denies its feelings of fear and
anxiety, splits feelings off, directing them at the mother’s breast, which splits into two parts and
fragments into bits. This defensive of splitting, enables the infant to ward off anxiety, by experiencing
the loving and nurturing mother, as separate, from the absent, neglectful and hated mother. This split in
the external object i.e. the mother, is impossible without a corresponding split in the infant’s own ego,
which becomes defensively severed into good and bad internal phantasy objects. This is the operation
of the Life and Death Instincts that we see evident in babies and adults. The infant ego sometimes
perceives a good mother, which it loves and identifies with and introjects as an ideal phantasy object,
and it sometimes perceives a bad mother, which it splits into pieces and projects its own destructive
instincts onto. The bad breast gives rise to an internal phantasy of a persecutory object, while the good
breast is idealized to protect the infant from the destructive persecution.

In her paper Notes of Some Schizoid Mechanisms (1946), Klein describes the paranoid-schizoid
position in detail. She writes, the infant, projecting its death instinct into the mother, means she is
experienced as bad and this gives rise to feelings of anxiety, because the infant fears that the object on
which it vents its rage will retaliate. In this way, part of the infant’s own death instinct is converted into
a fear of persecution and its remaining death instinct is converted into aggression and used against the
perceived bad mother/persecutor. Progressively, the infant’s phantasised attacks on the mother take on
an oral, anal and genital character as it moves through the psychosexual stages of development. The

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oral attacks involve phantasies of “sucking dry, biting up, scooping out and robbing the mother’s body
of its contents”, while the anal attacks aim to “expel dangerous substances (excrements) out of the self
and into the mother”.(2) It is from this conception of anal attacks, that Klein developed her theory of
projective identification:

“Together with these harmful excrements, expelled in hatred, split-off parts of the ego are
also projected on to the mother or, as I would rather call it, into the mother. These
excrements and bad parts of the self are meant not only to injure but also the control and
to take possession of the object. Insofar as the mother comes to contain the bad parts of
the self, she is not felt to be a separate individual but is felt to be the bad self.” (2)

The infant makes phantasised attacks on the mother by projecting its own death instincts into her,
with the purpose of injuring and taking possession of her. Klein distinguished this type of projection as
‘projective identification’, a splitting off by the infant in phantasy of a part of its own instinct and a
projection of it into the external world where it becomes installed, leaving the infant’s body and psyche
impoverished. Because the external object containing the split off projected instinct, is felt to be a part
of the self, the infant then fails to distinguish between itself and object and the two become confused.

Paranoid-schizoid processes of splitting, projective identification, idealisation, omnipotence and

denial are all active during the few months of life. The idealisation is a manifestation of the life instinct
which aiming at gratification, creates a phantasy of an ideal object. It is connected to splitting because
the exclusively good object is also an exaggerated defence against the bad object. In this way, splitting
creates both positive delusions of grandeur, as well as negative persecutory phantasies. Klein located
the Freudian ego defence mechanism of denial as originating in the paranoid-schizoid position, because
the first thing to be denied is the bodily and psychic reality of the destructive instincts, of the self and
others and its subsequent internalization as a negative phantasy of an evil/bad persecutor. The bad
instincts and objects are not only split off and kept apart from the good instincts and objects, the actual
existence is of the negative and destructive is denied.

Klein argued that this denial of instinctual psychical reality becomes possible through feelings of

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omnipotence. Omnipotent denial, of the reality of the existence of destructive instincts, of the reality of
the existence of bad external objects, of the reality of the existence of difficult and harmful internal
bodily and external environmental situations, is equal, to the denial and annihilation of bad objects
themselves. Klein traced the origins of the Oedipus complex back to this earliest paranoid-schizoid
position, where the infant experiences destructive instincts, feelings and phantasies. She theorized the
beginning of the Freudian superego, as the infant’s first introjection of the bad/punishing external
object i.e. the father, which creates a phantasy of an internal persecutory object:

“these processes participate in the building up to the ego and superego and prepare the
ground for the onset of the Oedipus complex in the second half of the first year of life.” (3)

In her 1935 paper ‘A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States’ Klein

introduced her theory of the infantile Depressive Position. She writes, in the course of normal ego
development, at around four months of age, the depressive position follows the paranoid-schizoid
position and good and bad begin to integrate in the infant psyche. The internalisation of enough good
objective life experiences, reassures the infant about the existence of the Life instincts. Because it feels
less threatened by objects made bad by its own projections, it feels less aggressive and more whole
because less impoverished in itself by what it had formerly split off. The infant begins to recognise its
mother as a whole and separate person with both good and bad instincts, feelings, thoughts, phantasies,
behaviours and actions. The increased awareness of reality and the capacity to tolerate ambivalence,
enable the infant to recognise the mother as a whole person distinct and separate from itself.
Simultaneously, the infant itself becomes more whole and not so anxiously split into good and bad
parts. Instead of splitting, projecting and denying the bad parts of itself and others, it is more able to
tolerate both life and death instincts within one and the same person. In the depressive position, we see
a tendency towards integration and synthesising the different part objects and this integration Klein
regarded as an expression of the life i.e. unifying instinct. In states of integration, synthesis between
love and hate in relation to whole others comes about, giving rise to feelings of guilt about former
destruction and the desire to make reparation. Klein writes:

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 “With the introjection of the complete object in about the second quarter of the first year,
marked steps in integration are made. This implies important changes in the relation to
objects. The loved and hated aspects of the mother are no longer felt to be so widely
separated, and the result is an increased fear of loss, states akin to mourning and a
feelings of guilt, because the aggressive impulses are felt to have been directed against
the loved object.” (4)

Whereas the paranoid-schizoid position is characterised by fragmentation, the depressive position

is characterised by ambivalence, fear of loss and guilt and the task becomes maintaining good relations
through care and concern. As good and bad instincts/objects/phantasies integrate, instead of being
split-off and denied, the developing ego takes in the gestalt i.e. the whole picture and the new
depressive anxiety is that the earlier projected death instincts, might have harmed and damaged the
good object and the infant begins to feel guilty about the damage it has done. The good object and all
that the life instincts stand for - union, love, pleasure and security - are mourned, all are felt to have
been lost, as a result of ones own destructive instincts and phantasies directed against the primary other.
The infant feels grief-stricken and depressive anxiety i.e. guilt sets in. As the parent is no longer a bad
object, responsible for the aggression in the world, the infant recognises its own responsibility. In the
earlier paranoid-schizoid position, feelings towards a part object are predominantly hateful and there is
no sense of a loss. The primary other is not missed or pined for, but unconsciously attacked as a bad
object. In the depressive position the reduced use of projection, leads to a greater sense of separateness
and dependence on an other separate person. No longer omnipotent, the infant realizes it is not attached
to the other and does not control or possess them and goes through feelings of loss and mourning.

The concern for the wholeness of the mother, is accompanied by reparative urges to re-create the
harmed lost object. The infant wants to repair the damage and restore the mother to life and wholeness.
Just as its death instincts/aggressive feelings are believed to have caused damage, so there is the
corresponding belief that its life/creative instincts can make good the damage. Klein refers to this
rebuilding work as reparation that allows the infant to rebuild its inner world, shattered by destructive
instincts. If reparation succeeds, then the infant develops ego strength and maturity. If it fails, then the

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infant may regress towards the earlier paranoid-schizoid position.

Paradoxically, it is with the melancholy of the depressive position that the ego develops. In
exchange for the bitter realisation that its mother is a whole and separate person, the infant’s “anxieties
lose in strength, objects become both less idealized and less terrifying and the ego becomes more
unified. All this is interconnected with the growing perception of reality and adaptation to it.”(5) As
the ego matures developmentally, the capacity to modify its phantasies, by comparing them with
reality, increases and this reality testing reduces anxiety. In her 1940 paper Mourning and Its Relation
to Manic-Depressive States, Klein writes about this connection between reality testing in mourning and
early developmental processes:

“My contention is that the child goes through states of mind comparable to the mourning
of the adult, or rather, that this early mourning is revived whenever grief is experienced
in later life. The most important of the methods by which the child overcomes his states
of mourning is in my view, the testing of reality - this process however, as Freud stresses,
is part of the work of mourning.” (6)

According to Klein, during the paranoid-schizoid position, when the infant introjects the good
object, it is incorporating in phantasy an image of a good object, but believes it is a real physical object.
Similarly, when it projects its destructive instincts, it views others as really bad people. So thinking in
the paranoid-schizoid position is concrete thinking. Instinctual phantasies are felt to be real and such
misperception is said to be the basis of omnipotence.

In her 1930 paper On the Importance of Symbol Formation in the Development of the Ego, Klein
writes that early symbols are not experienced by the ego as symbols, but are felt to be the object itself.
She explains that a symbol is a ‘substitute’ for the object it symbolises, it stands for the object and is
not confused with it but ‘recognized’ as a psychical object in its own right. In concrete thinking
characteristic of the paranoid-schizoid position, internal objects are equated with objects in the external

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world. Consequently, the formation of symbols, which consists in the ability to bring together two
separate objects, so that their difference is unimpaired, is impossible. It is only with the increased
capacity of the ego in the depressive position, to tolerate ambivalence and separation, that whole
objects are recognised as existing separately in their own right. Therefore, the psychical development
that takes place during the depressive position, paves the way for the metaphorical connection between
objects that we call symbolism, i.e. for a connection in phantasy, not in fact. For Klein, symbolism is
an attempt by the ego to deal with anxieties stirred up by the fears and anxieties. When a person is
terrified by destructive impulses, it erects defences against its own phantasies, that results in a paralysis
of symbol formation. And if the external world is not endowed with symbolic meaning, symbolization
does not occur and psychical development is arrested.

Briefly, in conclusion then, Klein held the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions to be part
of normal ego developmental processes and thought that difficulties which occur in the psychical
processes of these two positions, later become the basis of psychosis. She saw the paranoid-schizoid
position as the fixation-point for schizophrenia and the depressive position as the fixation-point of the
manic-depressive group of mental illnesses. Like Freud, her innovations in Psychoanalysis opened up
new paths to exploring mental states that before her remained unexplored. As a result of her
psychoanalytic theories, psychoanalysts became able to treat schizophrenic patients that were not
treated before and Klein’s ideas continue to reconceptualize inter-subjectivity, as we find today in the
British Psychoanalytic Object Relations schools of thought and practice.

References

1. Klein, M. (1935) A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic Depressive States, in The

Selected Melanie Klein, ed. Mitchell, J. Penguin Books, London. 1986 p.116

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2. Klein, M. (1946) Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms, in The Selected Melanie Klein, ed.
Mitchell, J. Penguin Books, London. 1986, p.183

3. ibid p.177

4. ibid p.189

5. ibid p.189

6. Klein, M. (1940) Mourning and Its Relation to Manic-Depressive States, in The Selected Melanie
Klein, ed. Mitchell, J. Penguin Books, London. 1986 p.147

Bibliography

Klein, M. (1930) The Importance of Symbol Formation in the Development of the Ego, in The Selected
Melanie Klein, ed. J. Mitchell. Penguin Books, London. 1986

Klein, M. (1937) Love, Guilt and Reparation, in Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works, Volume
1 ed. R.E. Money-Kyrle. Karnac Book, London. 1992