#internal objects

22nd January 2018

The large file D17 (ninety-nine sheets) contains a miscellany of interesting notes on theory and technique. Several sheets in this section of the archive are dated '1958', and it is likely that the whole file consists of late material, though it is impossible to know for certain.

I have selected some extracts that emphasise Klein's interest in discovering and analysing the loving parts of the patient, which are obscured by hatred and envy. This focus is already present in her 'Lectures on Technique', first delivered in 1936, and in her 'Seminars on Technique', recorded in 1958, both published in John Steiner's Lectures on Technique by Melanie Klein (2017, Routledge).

As a prelude to the archive notes, I quote a passage from the 1958 seminars:

There was a time when I felt very badly because my work on bringing out the importance of aggression led some analysts to behave as if they could see nothing but aggression. I was quite in despair. All I heard in seminars and at meetings of the society was aggression, aggression and aggression.

Now you cannot do anything with that at all because the point is that aggression can only be tolerated when it is modified, and mitigated, and this happens when you have brought out the capacity for love. (Steiner 2017, p. 112)

In the extracts reproduced below, Klein both underlines the serious problems that people face when they have what she describes as, 'strong constitutional envy', and stresses the possibility of retrieving the admiration often long hidden beneath this envy.

(To learn more about Klein’s ideas on envy, among various other concepts, have a look at the ‘Theory’ section of our website: http://www.melanie-klein-trust.org.uk/envy.)

[Sheet 1 of D17]

NOTE TO TECHNIQUE

In people where constitutional envy had been very great, great changes can be achieved. How this comes about is that with the first object against which the envy, soiling and destruction is directed, there is also admiration. Later on you do not find this admiration anymore, because the soiling has been too great. But if you can get back to this original admiration, you can get back to the loved part.

There is great relief and warm feeling when it is discovered that there is so much in a paper for instance that one can cherish. This makes a great difference in envy. Does this mean changing the functioning of the instincts or only in the states of fusion? If you can actually diminish the working of envy as a very fundamental impulse, the sequels are very important. There is more cooperation and with others and more appreciation of other people.

[Sheets 30-32 of D17]

Re "Envy" - possibly to be used in the 2nd edition [Klein was perhaps referring to a second edition of her monograph, Envy and Gratitude, which was first published in 1957]

I have pointed out that I believe in the constitutional element of envy as an expression of destructive impulses. The problem with which we are confronted, in analysing people with a strong tendency towards envy, in how we are to cure them. More recently, I have come to the conclusion that these are patients who belong to the type most difficult to cure, because this strong constitutional envy always goes with strong persecutory anxiety. Our aim to help the patient to regain his good object, to build it up, is far more difficult with patients in whom constitutional envy is strong, for they have not been able to secure initially a good object, because it was already spoilt by their envy. I have, however, found that even people with strong constitutional envy are not necessarily incurable. The need, in this case, is to get fully hold of their constructive and loving tendencies, which very often are strongly split off, but nevertheless, co exist with envy and destructive impulses. One important step in this direction is the reappearance of admiration for an object, first of all in the transference for the analyst. If and when that happens, we have been able to get back, I think, to the earliest situations, for the breast which was envied and spoilt, was envied because it was admired. Very soon envy may have the effect of spoiling any object for which admiration might be felt, but we must keep in mind that primarily the first envied object was a cause for admiration. Now it is this link which we have to keep in mind, if we hope to cure a patient in whom envy is very strong. In any case, it applies to all patients in so far as envy is operative, and there are no people in whom, up to a point, there is no envy. If the element of admiration is not overlooked and is made full use of in the analysis, we have a link with split off loving and constructive feelings. We should not, however, be deceived into believing that we can achieve a full elimination, as it were, of envy, for in people in whom that feeling is very strong, it will always persist up to a point, but better stability and better balance might be achieved. I have found that patients can be - to the fact that such impulses exist inside them, if they can really balance them sufficiently by constructive tendencies.

8th December 2022

In my last blog post I shared some of Klein’s notes on technique, and on interpretation specifically. These notes did not feature in her Lectures on Technique (Steiner, 2017), but I suggest that they are an interesting accompaniment to them. In the material that I have unearthed here, Klein talks further about interpretation - and we see her at work. One begins to form a vivid picture of her technical approach, and her way of being with her patients.

The following notes come from file PP/KLE/D.3 of the archive, which is titled, ‘Notes on Interpretation, notes on defence’. First, I share a short clinical vignette, which is typed, with added handwriting dating it to 12th March 1942. Klein has headed this vignette, ‘On the effect of interpretations of very frightening material’. She writes:

A woman patient who was in great stress of very deep anxieties in [which] her inside was felt to be like a sewer (her expression); everything deteriorated, in bits, mixed up with each other. In this particular hour the patient had expressed her feelings of dislike of herself – of disgust. The analysis was horrid, confusing, hostile. (PP/KLE/D.3; Image 15/85)

Klein often wrote about herself in the third person - frequently using 'K' as an abbreviation - and she does so here (the following passage appears within parentheses):

Klein’s interpretation was that the patient experienced Klein as if she were the processes going on inside her [the patient], even the bits of faeces, which she felt were mixed up with her bits [presumably the patient’s internal objects and processes]; and that the confusion in her mind which came from analysis was the confusion she herself experienced in her inner world. (Image 15/85)

The interpretation clearly brings relief, and the patient responds by saying, ‘Well, why didn’t you say so to me earlier?’ One imagines that further “groundwork” must have been done to enable the patient to accept such an interpretation. Nonetheless, Klein notes that,

The next part of the hour consisted in clearing up, of understanding and of a positive transference.

The following, longer clinical excerpt, comes from a session with a male patient whom Klein calls ‘O’. This material is also headed, ‘On the effect of interpretations of very frightening material’, and also dated ‘12/3/42’. Klein writes:

The patient in question is highly intellectual, but an unusual mixture of at the same time being capable and very willing to understand about his unconscious processes. He applies an unusual technique of an intellectual kind to that, guided by the wish to master this in the same way as he would an intellectual problem.

… In this particular hour, patient O, in entering the room, associates that tonight, what he felt some time ago as friendly – the curtains drawn, the light on, which evoked memories of the day time at home with his mother, one of the most pleasant memories of the past, tonight did not given the same impression. It was rather sinister, [and] seemed unnecessary because it was not yet dark enough… [It] reminds [O] of ‘the tricks of the trade’. He had expressed his gratitude and satisfaction at the same situation on other occasions. That is why he feels that doing this is to win him over, or to make him friendly after some rather frightening material in the last few hours. (Images 17/ and 19/85)

Again referring to herself in the third person, Klein writes:

(K. reminds him of what he himself has described as the enemy within. That applied to inefficient people in the conduct of our affairs, in contrast to the external enemy whom we have to fight.)

Now he himself caught on this expression ‘enemy within’ and came back to it later. He said that reminds [him]…of Klein’s interpretations of the ‘black sausage’ – an association which he had connected with a man whom he disliked in connection with a woman who he is fond of; and he said that he is dark and unlikeable in his mind. One of the next associations had been to the black sausage.

Now this and other material of internalised persecutors had come up in connection with his drawing Klein’s attention to the remark of the internal enemy. This was the material preceding this hour which started with the sinister impression of Klein’s room and the ‘tricks of the trade’ – expressing the distrust of Klein and her interpretations. It is important that he is constantly thinking of giving up the analysis, for which he had not very urgent motives, because his symptoms are consciously not of a very disturbing kind. He came for a particular reason, but since discovered that his relationships are not what they should be, that his relation to men is not at its best, and makes complications for him.

The fact that there was much unhappiness underneath and that he has dealt with it by getting away from love, or rather distributing it to a number of people, avoiding every tie and arranging his life accordingly: all this has become understood by him, but going with his very great fear of being tied in analysis there is a constant wish to give it up, at the same time preventing him from doing so for rational and irrational reasons.

(After his remarks about the sinister impression, Klein interprets that the last material was concerned with internal persecutors, his internal fears, and that now Klein’s room seemed probably full of the same things; and also that the internal enemies and processes which Klein interpreted to him, when they are experienced by him are transferred on to her – she becomes the representative of them.)

A moment after this, O turned round, looking into Klein’s face, and said with a voice more warm and friendly than she had ever heard in him: ‘I really hope that you do not believe that my remarks about tricks of the trade are of great importance. They are just fleeting associations. I really am very grateful to you for what you are doing for me, and I want you to know that’. After lying back again, O says that he thought Klein would probably be interested why he sat up; but he did feel that he wanted to look into her face and to tell her the affectionate feeling which he just had at that moment.

(K. interpreted the fact that giving him an interpretation referring to the aspect of K in which she was mixed up with his internal affairs and so on, made it possible for him to compare these feelings and aspects of her with ones nearer to reality, and allowed the friendly feelings to come up.) (Images 19/, 20/ and 22/55)

In a page entitled, ‘Draft summary on interpretations’ (image 50/85), Klein reflects that it is through interpretation that the patient is helped to ‘face his psychic reality’, and to compare this to external experiences which can become so coloured and distorted by phantasy.

Just this sort of process occurs when patient O experiences the drawn curtains and warm light of Klein’s consulting room as a trick, or an attempt to win him over following a difficult period in the analysis. O is helped by Klein to see that her consulting room becomes, in his experience, full of the internal persecutors they have been discussing. One result of this interpretive work is a very clear liberation of affectionate feelings. Klein writes:

[The] patient [is] enabled to compare phantasy situation with real situation, with consequent diminution of aggression. Repressed love feelings coming to the fore, as a result of diminished persecution. Interpretation reduces projection and splitting, increases hope and reparative tendencies. The analyst [is] turned into a good object and the[re is a] weakening of the negative transference.

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