David, this kind of thinking belongs to the early phase of clients work; she moved away from this kind of concreteness in her later work. The only way I can make sense of it is to think that Klein is here attributing some kind of awareness of the third . Some kind of early Oedipus situation. Best I can do.
I would have thought that the depressive position contains the best of the PS position and that you would retain the passion and the drive of PS in D without going back wholesale into this position- It seems strange to feel we would lurch to and fro btw these two positions and not resolve, not to a state of transcendence, but to a kind of hybrid state of the two positions.
@@doncarveth yes as I said though not to a state of transcendence but a kind of hybrid position that contains the best of both - or do we posit that in the parameters of this theory it is not possible to resolve this binary and this back snd forth is the existential foundation of our human condition ?
@@velvetclaw2316 The idea of a kind of transitional area between PS and Dee is appealing. James grout stain positive a transcendent position beyond PS & D yet Inc. them. I think moments of the Gillion synthesis, just moments, or possible, before the fall back into conflict.
It seems on first view to me that falling in love would belong in the depressive / reparative position - isn’t falling in love the ultimate ‘ concern for the other ‘? Or are we ascribing it to narcissistic gratification only ?
1:20:00 Would you agree that another interpretation of why a child might develop a fierce super ego in response towards lenient parents, would be as a way of creating an internal protector in the absence of boundaried, containing parenting? In other words, because the child actually needs a powerful protector to feel safe?
Hi Professor. I hope you are well. Thanks for this lecture. In the last few minutes, there was a question about internalisation and you spoke about Klein's view of it being a phantasy (not a real mental process). However, internalising the good breast is also one of her key ideas. Is there a contradiction? Clinically, I thought part of the cure for the Kleinians is the internalisation of the analyst as a good object.
Good catch, but here’s the resolution: by internalization of the good object she means the building up of the fantasy that there is a good object inside.
@@doncarveth I really appreciate your reply. As you said, she recognised that the goodness of the external mother, so it seems that there is an implicit process of taking in some goodness from the external object even it is phantastic. Clinically, I wonder if my interpretation of clients' intrapsychic conflicts can only be used by clients if it goes hand in hand with taking in some good aspects of me as a therapist... Could I ask which book of Hanna Segal your class read?
Not the green Karnak Klein but “introduction to the work of Melanie Klein.“ Yes Klein makes clear health involves internalizing both the goodness of the mother and the goodness of the analyst.
You mentioned the dialectical progression of Klein's theory on the relationship between the positions. Does Klein invoke dialectics herself? Was that observation original? Was it pulled from secondary literature? Inter-object relations, self-envy 😲 This lecture is becoming more and more metaphysical by the second. Out of curiosity, do you find metaphysical systems like those of Kant and Hegel to be in any way instructive for psychoanalysis? There is a contemporary philosopher named Slavoj Zizek who's work deals intensively with reconciling Hegel's metaphysics with Lacan's psychoanalysis. I find the concept intruiging, but I find Lacan to be out of reach (for now).
With the discussion of dialectical models vs one-way thinking, do you think there is a connection to the science of dynamical systems and nonlinear oscillations between states (phase transitions)? I recently saw a fascinating lecture that looked at Bion through the lens of nonlinear dynamics. What are you thoughts on psychoanalysis as a sort of poetic understanding of chaos and complexity?
Well, it is certainly a science of complexity, but the term “chaos“ bothers me, as does the term “poetic”. I know these terms are not necessarily meant to imply disorder, relativism, etc., but because of these associations they seem incompatible with my belief in an order underlying chaos that is often discoverable in the analytic process.
@@doncarveth chaos in this context means the loss of 1:1 correlation and whole being equal to the sum of the parts, not necessarily disorder. It seems to me we struggle to represent these types of processes linguistically. Michael Butz has a good book called chaos and complexity: implications for psychological theory, but it's more of an overview and I was curious about the relationship to psychoanalysis specifically. Really enjoying your lectures!
@@bigpicsoccer Chaos is most simply understood as sensitivity to initial conditions. My intuition is that we are not dealing with a chaotic system here, rather with complex but convergent systems. EDIT: To be clear: a chaotic system is one where small changes in the initial state produce drastic differences in result. A limited set of developmental phases or positions regardless of input would indicate that the system in question is not so chaotic.
Your comment on depression being incompatible with the depressive position around 7 minutes in, does that apply to dysthymia? EDIT: Or a depressive disposition for that matter. Or are these reducible to one another? I was taught to understand these as distinct constructs but they are all fundamentally self-persucatory, aren't they?
I don’t think they are all necessarily persecutory. Dysthymia may refer to sadness, unhappiness, the blues, and therefore can be considered depressive position phenomena.
@@doncarveth Do you think capital D depression has its roots in self-effacing or even self-deprecating (maybe also world-effacing) core beliefs? I will probably find my answer in one of your other videos if not here. It is of some practical importance to me I think. In daily life I think of depression as an atrophy of will. An expedient explanation no doubt, but persecutory in it's own right. I switched the paragraphs of this comment to lead with my question. Here is my response to your response to my original question: Quite right. I think you implied this when you described potential drawbacks of the depressive position. There is a necessary persecutory element with dysthymia insofar as it is defined as abnormal (poor) baseline mood. The notion of an abnormal baseline (now there's a dialectic for you!) strikes me as inherently persecutory, but perhaps that could only be so from the Paranoid-Schizoid position.
This series is so informative, and so well presented. I’m so grateful for all your content
1:18:10 “Because personality structure is grounded in fantasy, if you change the fantasy the personality changes”. - Damn!!!
YES!
David, this kind of thinking belongs to the early phase of clients work; she moved away from this kind of concreteness in her later work. The only way I can make sense of it is to think that Klein is here attributing some kind of awareness of the third . Some kind of early Oedipus situation. Best I can do.
I would have thought that the depressive position contains the best of the PS position and that you would retain the passion and the drive of PS in D without going back wholesale into this position- It seems strange to feel we would lurch to and fro btw these two positions and not resolve, not to a state of transcendence, but to a kind of hybrid state of the two positions.
Well, Freud and Klein essentially adhered to a tragic sense of life. They were not into notions of transcendence.
@@doncarveth yes as I said though not to a state of transcendence but a kind of hybrid position that contains the best of both - or do we posit that in the parameters of this theory it is not possible to resolve this binary and this back snd forth is the existential foundation of our human condition ?
@@velvetclaw2316 The idea of a kind of transitional area between PS and Dee is appealing. James grout stain positive a transcendent position beyond PS & D yet Inc. them. I think moments of the Gillion synthesis, just moments, or possible, before the fall back into conflict.
It seems on first view to me that falling in love would belong in the depressive / reparative position - isn’t falling in love the ultimate ‘ concern for the other ‘? Or are we ascribing it to narcissistic gratification only ?
1:20:00 Would you agree that another interpretation of why a child might develop a fierce super ego in response towards lenient parents, would be as a way of creating an internal protector in the absence of boundaried, containing parenting? In other words, because the child actually needs a powerful protector to feel safe?
Yes
How can prelinguistic preabstract baby develop guilt feelings about his own subjective instinctual feelings
Some of these statements are excessive, to me.
Hi Professor. I hope you are well. Thanks for this lecture. In the last few minutes, there was a question about internalisation and you spoke about Klein's view of it being a phantasy (not a real mental process). However, internalising the good breast is also one of her key ideas. Is there a contradiction? Clinically, I thought part of the cure for the Kleinians is the internalisation of the analyst as a good object.
Good catch, but here’s the resolution: by internalization of the good object she means the building up of the fantasy that there is a good object inside.
@@doncarveth I really appreciate your reply. As you said, she recognised that the goodness of the external mother, so it seems that there is an implicit process of taking in some goodness from the external object even it is phantastic. Clinically, I wonder if my interpretation of clients' intrapsychic conflicts can only be used by clients if it goes hand in hand with taking in some good aspects of me as a therapist... Could I ask which book of Hanna Segal your class read?
Not the green Karnak Klein but “introduction to the work of Melanie Klein.“ Yes Klein makes clear health involves internalizing both the goodness of the mother and the goodness of the analyst.
You mentioned the dialectical progression of Klein's theory on the relationship between the positions. Does Klein invoke dialectics herself? Was that observation original? Was it pulled from secondary literature?
Inter-object relations, self-envy 😲 This lecture is becoming more and more metaphysical by the second.
Out of curiosity, do you find metaphysical systems like those of Kant and Hegel to be in any way instructive for psychoanalysis?
There is a contemporary philosopher named Slavoj Zizek who's work deals intensively with reconciling Hegel's metaphysics with Lacan's psychoanalysis. I find the concept intruiging, but I find Lacan to be out of reach (for now).
Much of this is addressed in my 2018 book: psychoanalytic thinking call in a dialectical critique of contemporary theory and practice, Routledge
@@doncarveth Perfect!
With the discussion of dialectical models vs one-way thinking, do you think there is a connection to the science of dynamical systems and nonlinear oscillations between states (phase transitions)? I recently saw a fascinating lecture that looked at Bion through the lens of nonlinear dynamics. What are you thoughts on psychoanalysis as a sort of poetic understanding of chaos and complexity?
Well, it is certainly a science of complexity, but the term “chaos“ bothers me, as does the term “poetic”. I know these terms are not necessarily meant to imply disorder, relativism, etc., but because of these associations they seem incompatible with my belief in an order underlying chaos that is often discoverable in the analytic process.
@@doncarveth chaos in this context means the loss of 1:1 correlation and whole being equal to the sum of the parts, not necessarily disorder. It seems to me we struggle to represent these types of processes linguistically. Michael Butz has a good book called chaos and complexity: implications for psychological theory, but it's more of an overview and I was curious about the relationship to psychoanalysis specifically. Really enjoying your lectures!
@@bigpicsoccer Chaos is most simply understood as sensitivity to initial conditions. My intuition is that we are not dealing with a chaotic system here, rather with complex but convergent systems.
EDIT: To be clear: a chaotic system is one where small changes in the initial state produce drastic differences in result. A limited set of developmental phases or positions regardless of input would indicate that the system in question is not so chaotic.
Your comment on depression being incompatible with the depressive position around 7 minutes in, does that apply to dysthymia?
EDIT: Or a depressive disposition for that matter. Or are these reducible to one another? I was taught to understand these as distinct constructs but they are all fundamentally self-persucatory, aren't they?
I don’t think they are all necessarily persecutory. Dysthymia may refer to sadness, unhappiness, the blues, and therefore can be considered depressive position phenomena.
@@doncarveth
Do you think capital D depression has its roots in self-effacing or even self-deprecating (maybe also world-effacing) core beliefs? I will probably find my answer in one of your other videos if not here. It is of some practical importance to me I think. In daily life I think of depression as an atrophy of will. An expedient explanation no doubt, but persecutory in it's own right.
I switched the paragraphs of this comment to lead with my question. Here is my response to your response to my original question: Quite right. I think you implied this when you described potential drawbacks of the depressive position. There is a necessary persecutory element with dysthymia insofar as it is defined as abnormal (poor) baseline mood. The notion of an abnormal baseline (now there's a dialectic for you!) strikes me as inherently persecutory, but perhaps that could only be so from the Paranoid-Schizoid position.
Please comment on the death of Elizabeth II and the public's notion of her as "the good mother." 9.8.22
What is kleins view about homosexuality?
You should research this.
Did my homework,she denies a homosexual identity or even preference,seeing it rather as position structured by fantasies of the inner world