Loss of the Loved Object: Tragic and Moral Motifs in Melanie

Klein's Concept of the Depressive Position

Meira Likierman

ABSTRACT. This paper offers a reading of Melanie Klein's concept of the depressive
position based on primary texts. A problematic area is uncovered, resulting from a
contradictory tension amongst phenomena grouped under Klein's concept. Specifically,
the author notes two motifs that run through her descriptions, which are metaphorically
labelled in this paper as `tragic' and `moral'. These are shown to negate each other in
experiential terms, as the more primitive `tragic' level implies irrevocable loss and hence
catastrophic states, whereas the more mature `moral' level derives strength from
reparation. These two motifs create a dialectic tension that enriches Klein's concept.

Introduction

Melanie Klein defined the `depressive position' in two stages (1935, 1940) and continued
subsequently to elaborate its details. This extended structuring of the concept made for an
unusual complexity. It might also account for a problematic area in Klein's thinking that
this paper seeks to address.
The thesis advanced in this paper is that there is a contradictory tension between
some of the phenomena grouped by Klein under her concept of the depressive position.
This had implications for the later use of the concept which inclined towards a more
selective definition than the primary textual one. However, the theoretical tension in
Klein's works enriches the concept and is therefore worth reconsidering.
This thesis might have implications for the links that Klein (1940) explored between
the depressive position and the Oedipus complex, but these remain beyond its scope. The
focus is on an analysis of Klein's formulation of the concept, and the starting point is in a
brief consideration of its historical vicissitudes.

Further Understanding of Depressive Phenomena

As psychoanalysts gained a fuller appreciation of the concept through its creative

clinical use (cf. Spillius 1988), they found it more useful to emphasize the permanence of
depressive phenomena in mental life. This was a new understanding, for though Klein
herself did not regard the depressive position as a `phase' of development, she
nonetheless focused on it as an event of infancy which she placed within the first six
months of life. Prior to this she suggested an initial 'paranoid-schizoid position' (Klein
1946) from which the infant emerges when its ego is sufficiently integrated to
accommodate the knowledge of a `whole' object with positive and negative aspects (Klein
1935, 1940).
Klein showed how the event of ego integration triggers the depressive position. The

Meira Likierman is based at the Tavistock Clinic where she is the Course Tutor of the MA in
Psychoanalytic Studies Programme. Address for correspondence: Child and Family Department,
Tavistock Clinic, 120 Belsize Lane, London NW3 5BA.

British Journal of Psychotherapy, Vol 12(2), 1995

© The author
148 British Journal of Psychotherapy (1995) 12(2)

infant experiences 'a loss of the loved object' (Klein 1935, p. 263), and hence states of
grief and sorrow. Guilt is added to these emotions since the infant attributes the loved
object's absences to its own aggressive impulses. Such 'assumptions' derive from
primitive phantasy, their significance initially negated through manic defences. In the
course of development acute anxieties of loss and guilt modify and evolve into concern
for the object. This is supported by reparative processes that salvage and preserve the
object (cf. Segal 1979, Hinshelwood 1989, Spillius 1988).
Klein came to believe that the depressive position is never entirely transcended and
that it could be re-activated in situations such as mourning (Klein 1940). Generally
though, she believed that it was overcome in infancy.
A subsequent shift in perspective has taken the depressive position out of the
confines of a specifically infantile definition. It has been re-evaluated as a mode of object
relating that is intersubjective and altruistic in essence. A continual fluctuation between
this mode and the more primitive paranoid-schizoid one or 'P/S-D' (Bion 1963) has come
to be seen as governing psychical life. This progressive-regressive slide has been felt to
exist even on the micro level represented in 'the fine grain of a session' (Steiner 1987).
Joseph analysed the importance of such fluctuations for technique:

The notion of positions helps us as a framework, to orient ourselves in our listening to our
patients. We need to get the feeling of the central position in which his mind is currently
operating - whether, for example, he is viewing his world ... more from a depressive stance with
a sense of responsibility, pain, and guilt that has to be dealt with or from a more paranoid stance
with much splitting off and projection of impulses. (Joseph 1981, p. 117)

With this shift of emphasis from infantile to general experience, depressive

phenomena have assumed the significance of vital features of object relations,
representing the capacity to exercise concern towards the loved object. The notion of '
overcoming' the depressive position has no longer seemed useful in this context, and
Kleinian thinkers have suggested that any overcoming is not of depressive emotions as
such. Segal, for instance, suggested that what is overcome amounts to traces of paranoid-
schizoid anxieties still active in the depressive position:

Clinically and developmentally it is certainly true that persecutory anxieties persist in the
depressive position. It is, however, useful to ... consider the persecutory fears still operative in
the depressive position as belonging to the paranoid-schizoid position; the working through of
the depressive position could then be considered precisely as the overcoming of the paranoid-
schizoid elements by the depressive ones. (my italics - Segal 1979, p. 123)

Meltzer has suggested that overcoming amounts to an acceptance of depressive anxieties:

I take it that by 'overcoming' the depressive position [Klein] meant learning to tolerate the
depressive anxieties about the destruction of the good object. (Meltzer 1978, p. 10)

Yet such an understanding of overcoming relates better to later insights. The primary
texts reveal Klein's belief that it is crucial to overcome the depressive position:

I have shown here and in my previous paper the deeper reasons for the individual's incapacity to
overcome successfully the infantile depressive position. Failure to do so may result in depressive
illness ... (Klein 1940, p. 368)

The texts also reveal that it was specifically depressive anxieties such as grief,
depression and feelings of loss (rather than paranoid-schizoid anxieties) that Klein
assigned to the class of emotions that needed to be overcome: 'The diminishing of fears
Meira Likierman 149

through happy experiences help the baby step by step to overcome his depression and
feelings of loss' (Klein 1940, p. 347), and 'In normal development these feelings of grief
and fears are overcome' (Klein 1940, p. 345). Klein's intentions are reinforced by the
context in which she made such assertions, for she often made little differentiation
between the status of depressive and persecutory anxieties. Both could lead to illness:

To repeat my conclusion expressed in earlier writings: persecutory and depressive anxieties, if

excessive, may lead to severe mental illness and mental deficiency in childhood. These two
forms of anxiety also provide the fixation points for paranoic, schizophrenic and
manicdepressive illnesses in adult life. (Klein 1952, p. 269)

Klein's clinical conclusions also reinforced this point. For example, when discussing
her patient Rita's difficulties (Klein 1945) she emphasized that these were due to both
depressive and persecutory anxieties:

Rita's relation to her mother was dominated by two great sources of anxiety: persecutory fear
and depressive anxiety ... she was therefore overwhelmed by the fear of losing her. (Klein 1945,
p. 400)

Klein related this to her observations of how typical depressive anxieties deeply
undermined Rita's security: `Her feelings of guilt and unhappiness expressed themselves
in constant questions to her mother: "Am I good?" "Do you love me?" and so on' (Klein
1945, p. 398).
Such thinking was not an early passing phase in Klein's theory, but evident in her
writings until the end of her life. She continued to group depressive and persecutory
anxieties together in writings as late as her 1963 paper on loneliness. For example, in this
she describes a patient who `reached a fair level of integration but this was disturbed by
persecutory and depressive anxiety . . .' (Klein 1963, p. 308).
As suggested, the notion of overcoming the depressive position does not seem
relevant to a more contemporary view of the concept that emphasizes its value for growth
and also its permanence. Some elements in Klein's vision might therefore appear to be
dated due to the particular historical context in which she operated. Yet the texts reveal
that more is involved in Klein's belief that the depressive position is normally overcome.
Hinshelwood (1989) notes that Klein felt that primitive guilt, a central feature of the
depressive position, must be overcome if the infant is to avoid a slavish dependence on
the object. In addition, Klein suggested that other depressive emotions such as `sorrow', '
grief, `depression' and `fear of loss' are initially `psychotic in content' (Klein 1940, p. 347)
. As such they amount together to a germ of a depressive illness, or a `melancholia in
status nascendi' (Klein 1940, p. 345).
This aspect of Klein's thinking is familiar but the idea that anxieties should be
altogether overcome in the process of growth may seem anachronistic. It is now
recognized that psychic pain, with some depression, guilt and fear of loss are essential to
normal adult object relations. This is especially so when experienced in the normal
fluctuations as summed up by Bion's (1963) 'P/S-D'. Ogden (1992), for example, suggests
that without such fluctuations psychical life would stagnate. Yet a scrutiny of the texts
reveals that in her thinking Klein already laid the foundation for this later understanding.
Her description of how infantile states change with evolution implied a great deal about
the nature of the mature psychical states that evolve from them, even though she was not
writing about the depressive position in adult experience. The notion of 'overcoming' is
central to this.
However. Klein's notion of overcoming also touches on a problematic area in the
150 British Journal of Psychotherapy (1995) 12(2)

concept of the depressive position that in turn points to the contradictory nature of the
phenomenon that she tried to describe. Specifically, `overcoming' in the texts applies to a
level of depressive experience that is submerged in the process of growth but that
continues nonetheless to represent a powerful psychical reality. As such, it affects the
more evolved mode of psychical functioning that replaces it.

Tragedy and Morality

Two contradictory motifs figure in Klein's vision of the depressive position. In order to
focus more easily on these they will be refered to as `tragic' and `moral' in this paper. The
`tragic' motif centres on an experience of irrevocable loss or damage. This is felt to have
been brought about through the subject's own aggression. On the otherhand, the `moral'
motif centres on the infantile capacity to acknowledge guilt and responsibility for
aggression, with the resulting capacity to engage in reparation. Those `moral' process
correspond to an attitude of concern for the object.
The terms `tragic' and `moral' together also serve in some respects as a cultural and
historical metaphor for psychical development in this paper. The `moral' framework that
appears in Klein's texts is in continuity with some of what has been embodied in Judao-
Christian religious themes, or with what Segal (1979) described as 'an ethical world' when
introducing Klein's work. The `tragic' motif invoked in this paper is in keeping with
central aspects of a more archaic religious framework as expressed in the rites of Greek
tragedy.
The intention, however, is to use such themes metaphorically, and not to equate what
is in the Kleinian texts with any extrinsic cultural norms of `tragedy' and `morality'. These
motifs do not enter the Kleinian texts from without, as consciously selected cultural
influences, but emerge from within, as intrinsic aspects of Klein's vision of basic,
universal configurations of psychical experience.
`Tragedy' - the irrevocable loss at the heart of the depressive phenomenon - is the `
loss of the loved object' (Klein 1935, p. 263). The catastrophic, `tragic' quality of this loss
reverberates throughout life with the significance of the lost original intra-uterine
perfection (Klein 1957). However, the experience of the `loss of the loved object' derives
its essence not so much from regressive intra-uterine strivings, as from the initial impact
of life itself, presented to the infant through its first good object. The good, nurturing
object of earliest infancy - the breast - is `loved' in the most primitive, overpowering
sense (Likierman 1993). It is invested with the `whole' of the infant's `instinctual desires
and his unconscious phantasies' (Klein 1957, p. 180), which as such amount to `the
manifestation of forces which tend to preserve life' (Klein 1957, p. 311).
The essence of the infant's quest for psychical nourishment and `life' is projected at
moments of contact with the nurturing object. The latter is invested with a fundamental
life-giving significance and introjected to form the `core of the ego' (Klein 1957, p. 180).
It develops to provide 'the foundation for hope, trust and belief in goodness' (p. 180) as
well as becoming the `prototype of maternal goodness, inexhaustible patience and
generosity' (p. 180).
The good internal object is structured on the basis of introjected maternal goodness,
and represents the phantasy objectification of such goodness, hence an endowment of a
central aspect of the psyche, its `core', with an identity that can be experienced in
primitive phantasy. Losing such an object amounts to the profound loss of the life-
orientated, self-nourishing aspect of the psyche, the `core' of the self. Thus the 'loss
Meira Likierman 151

of the loved object' is an internal event related to the internal object, as well as being
bound up with the perceived loss of the external object or its qualities due to separations
and weaning.
The implications of such a loss are initially of an internal catastrophe so that `the
infant's internal world is felt to be in bits' (Segal 1978, p. 70). The result is 'a nightmare
of desolation' (Riviere 1936, p. 145) that threatens breakdown. Indeed Klein felt that `
without the good object at least to some extent becoming part of the ego, life cannot
continue' (Klein 1960, p. 265).
Exactly this sense of impending psychical catastrophe in the face of irrevocable loss
is most powerfully present in Greek tragedy. In the Oedipus narrative it is represented by
the maternal suicide followed by the hero's self-blinding - suggestive not only of the loss
of the maternal object, but also of the resulting catastrophic darkness into which the hero'
s world is subsequently plunged.
Whilst the world of tragic, irrevocable loss suggests a world overwhelmed by
destruction and guilt, the world where the `moral' framework is secure is one in which an
order has been set up precisely to prevent tragic consequences. As suggested, in the
Kleinian texts its essence is the capacity to experience the state of the internal object,
continually make good any damage inflicted on it, and thus preserve it. Within such a
system damage is not allowed to reach absolute proportions, for a continual internal
awareness implies a continual reparative activity.
Theoretically there seems to be little difficulty in relating the infantile `tragedy' of the
`loss of the loved object' to the object-related `morality' that emerges from it. But in
experiential terms, the depressive position is constructed of two main states that negate
each other.
`Morality' in the Kleinian texts reverses the result of `tragedy'. The object is no longer
irrevocably damaged or lost but, quite the opposite, restored and safeguarded. The early
phantasy of harbouring a dying or dead object (Klein 1935) is replaced by a new and
opposite experience of a live object that is successfully preserved.
This negation may seem to be insignificant since `tragedy' is a merely temporary
phenomenon, a primitive state that is later replaced by `morality'. However, this
temporary significance is only experienced retrospectively by the individual. From the
infantile perspective each part of the depressive experience is characterized by its very
completeness as a world view, its comprising `a total situation' (Klein 1944, p. 839).
Perhaps more than any other Kleinian concept the depressive position requires us to
accommodate the fractured nature of experience, the lack of a subjective sense of
continuity in the present experiencing of evolutionary phases that only become `a
development' retrospectively.
When the `tragedy' of `loss of the loved object' is first experienced it cannot be
modified by what lies ahead and out of its present orbit, the future development of a
stable object-related `morality'. In a primitive psychical state there is no such experience
as a potential loss, or a mere fear of losing the object, before there is a subjective internal
experience that gives meaning to actual loss. Remaining within the bounds of mere fear
for the object is in any case a theoretical fiction, as Klein was aware:

A hungry infant cannot ascertain the limit to which his aggression is justified and beyond which
it becomes murderous and destructive . . . Moreover, in the early mind desires and phantasies
are felt to be omnipotent. (1944, p. 836)
152 British Journal of Psychotherapy (1995) 12(2)

Klein did indeed stress that in reality the caring mother continually shields the infant
from the devastation of `tragedy'. Although the mother is periodically lost - externally
through separations and internally through infantile aggression - she is also continually `
regained' (Klein 1935, 1940). But, however limited or temporary its duration, `tragedy'
can only be known initially as a `total situation' and so as a subjective psychical reality.
This means that, underlying the narrative of morality with its powers of hope and
continuity, and with its measure of control over events, is a hidden stratum of a
completely different order - the tragedy that ends in destruction and loss and that leads to
despair and madness. Because of the timelessness of unconscious psychical realities `
tragedy' and `morality' can, in one sense, be regarded as simultaneous narratives that work
on two levels within the Kleinian texts. Klein's vision of the psyche suggests that a
continual underlying level of tragedy ensures that the secondary, `higher' level of morality
retains its sense, for morality must assume the possibility of irrevocable loss all the time.

Ambivalence

Klein's definition of the depressive position was partly structured descriptively,

through her depiction of a series of subjective internal scenarios - `phantasies' (Isaacs
1943). However, she also approached it conceptually, and for this perhaps the term `
ambivalence' is most relevant. It is Klein's depiction of the process of primitive
ambivalence that further illuminates the nature of both levels of the depressive position.
There is more than one way of interpreting ambivalence, but it has mostly been
viewed as a capacity to entertain conflicting emotions simultaneously, hence a state of
conflict that generates growth. This view of ambivalence as a state of `mixed feelings' for
the object has led to the `depressive' infant being typically described as recognizing or
realizing his ambivalence (Rosenfeld 1950; Spillius 1988; Britton 1989), indicating a
capacity to be aware of contrasting feelings. Money-Kyrle, for instance, described the
infantile depressive position as a stage 'in which the developing infant begins to become
aware of, and miserable about, the conflict between his hatred and love' (Money-Kyrle
1956, p. 29)
Such awareness is an essential aspect of the more evolved mode of the depressive
position. As suggested, the state of `morality' receives its impetus from a more primitive
level of experience that threatens catastrophic loss. The state of `morality' is thus
contradictory in its very essence. However, it is important to assess in what sense the
capacity to sustain a tension between conflicting states is present at the onset of the
depressive position. Klein's thoughts indicate that initially the infant `lives' ambivalence
rather than `recognizing' it, undergoing swings from sadistic attacks to an acutely anxious
primitive love: `We must not lose sight of the fact that sadistic impulses ... are a most
potent factor in the infant's conflicts arising at this stage' (Klein 1952, p. 92).
To sadism is added overwhelming greed: `Greed ... is felt to be uncontrollable and
destructive and to endanger the loved external and internal objects' (1952, p. 73). `
Uncontrollable and destructive' greed corresponds to irrevocable damage or loss. Within
the infant's most primitive framework each part of the ambivalent relationship thus
comprises a `total situation' that overwhelms him in turn. This pattern to some extent fits
into the earlier paranoid-schizoid framework from which the infantile
Meira Likierman 153

psyche is still in the process of emerging, so that `the . . . splitting processes characteristic
of the paranoid-schizoid position continue, though changed in strength and form, into the
depressive position' (Klein 1935, p. 264).
Whilst a qualitative change does begin to take place in the intensity of infantile
aggression, the very gradual nature of this change means that at the early stages of the
depressive position sadism continues to feature with a primitive ferociousness:

In my opinion, the paranoiac mechanism of destroying the objects ... by every means derived
from oral, urethral and anal sadism, persists, but still in a lesser degree and with a certain
modification due to the change in the subject's eelations to his objects. (Klein 1935, p. 265).

Ambivalence thus evolves gradually from early splitting and is in organic continuity
with it. It therefore continues to be `carried out in the splitting of the imagos' (Klein 1940,
p. 350), and this is linked to Klein's emphatic assertion that `I must again make clear that
in my view the depressive state is based on the paranoid state and genetically derived
from it' (Klein 1935, p. 275).
This indicates that `integration' is an extended process that initially begins as a
qualitative change in each of the split-off parts of early experience. Within the earliest
paranoid-schizoid state each split-off, momentary experience of the object saturates the
infantile psyche obliterating all trace of adjacent or previous impressions. It is a `complete
situation' (Klein 1944, p. 839) so that `young infants alternate swiftly between states of
complete gratification and of great distress' (Klein 1952, p. 71). With psychical
development each new experience is no longer `complete' in itself and severed from a
context of others. It has become `porous' (Klein 1952, p. 66) to preceding and adjacent
impressions, enabling love and hatred to `come much closer together' (Klein 1952, p. 72).
The impact of aggressive moments necessarily lingers even after the aggression itself
begins to subside. The significance of such moments necessarily seeps into the now more
`porous', new moments of object love, affecting their nature. By implication `recognizing'
ambivalence is initially not so much a reasoning act as an emotional experience. It
expresses a coincidence of the significance of aggression and love, and as such assumes
the phantasy form of a particular object relation, that is, the `tragic' `loss of the loved
object' (Klein 1935, p: 265).
The crux of `tragedy' is derived from the processes of primitive ambivalence. It is at
moments of moving from aggression to love that the infant is likely to grapple with the
psychical effects of recent sadism; in as much as the latter has still been of an
overwhelming quality, its consequences continue to correspond to experiences of
irrevocable damage and loss.

`Overcoming'

Such states of volatile fluctuations between uncontrollable aggression and the

resulting `nightmare of desolation' (Riviere 1936) are gradually outgrown, but this
depends on the infant's secure instating of the good object within his inner world (Klein
1935). `Overcoming' thus has two facets in Klein's vision. On the one hand it represents
the mastering of hate by love, a process that corresponds to the secure establishing of the
good object within the self. The internal scenario that corresponds to this is the
overcoming of `tragic' states so that, when primitive ambivalence subsides. so do the
acute fears of catastrophe which it instigates:
154 British Journal of Psychotherapy (1995) 12(2)

[The infant's] confidence in his own as well as in other people's goodness becomes strengthened,
his hope that his `good' objects and his own ego can be saved and preserved increases, at the
same time as his ambivalance and acute fears of internal destruction diminish. (Klein 1940, p.
347)

Fear

From the angle of subjective experience `overcoming' also applies to more than the
initial emergence from `tragedy' proper. As a first step in growth, there is a shift from a
helpless experiencing of the object's absolute damage or loss to a capacity to anticipate
these possibilities. This introduces a new experience - a fear for the object's safety. Fear
indicates the initial ability to retain the significance of aggression and so anticipate it,
rather than succumbing to its effects helplessly when it arises. This corresponds to a
greater awareness of internal threats to the object, and an acknowledgement that in the
face of these the psyche might lack the means to protect the object:

Here we see one of the situations which I described above, as being fundamental for `the loss of
the loved object'; the situation, namely when the ego becomes fully identified with its good
internalized objects and at the same time becomes aware of its own incapacity to protect and
preserve them. (Klein 1935, p. 265)

Fear thus corresponds to a progressive developmental step, the beginnings of `

morality', but it is also initially a primitive, overwhelming phenomenon. When aggression
is still unmodified, its fearful anticipation necessarily takes on an acute, psychotic quality.
The object is continually felt to be at the mercy of imminent dangers, and such anxiety,
though on the object's behalf, is therefore persecutory in quality: `The dread of
persecution, which was at first felt on the ego's account, now relates to the good object as
well' (Klein 1935, p. 264).
Klein vividly describes an early state of mind in which there is no respite from
incessant dread on the object's behalf. Both phantasies of projection and those of
introjection are felt to be of no avail, as the object is threatened within and without, and
there is no enduring way of situating it safely:

There is, furthermore, a deep anxiety as to the dangers that await the object inside the ego. It
cannot be safely maintained there, as the inside is felt to be a dangerous and poisonous place. (
Klein 1935, p. 265)

In Klein's vision of development such primitive fears of imminent catastrophe are also
overcome. As with `tragic' states, the infant must emerge from states of mind governed by
`near tragic' fears.

Tragic Elements in the Moral Order

The notion of overcoming infantile `tragic' states and anxieties is nevertheless

conceptually complicated, since the `tragic' level of the depressive position is not easily
differentiated from its more evolved mode. As suggested, `overcoming' means that an
internal scenario of tragedy ceases to dominate experience, but not that its significance
recedes altogether. Whilst `tragedy' becomes gradually overlaid in the process of growth,
its presence in the primitive strata of the psyche continues to give it the power of an
emblematic tale of warning. It is thus essential to a `moral' framework that protects the
good internal object, even though in its essence it represents a negation of the security
and progress achieved through `morality'.
Meira Likierman 155

This would indicate that a dialectical tension needs to be maintained in the mature
psyche that neither annihilates nor completely succumbs to the significance of primitive `
tragedy'. This tension is itself an inseparable aspect of the `moral' level of the depressive
position. The differentiation that needs to be maintained is between this tension and `
tragedy' proper, or between primitive and more mature depressive states. For instance,
thinkers who choose to focus on the more progressive mode of the depressive position
necessarily include in this focus some aspects of its more primitive 'tragic' level:

The infant begins to feel guilt over his attacks on the good object and becomes afraid of the
damage done to it and afraid of losing the object. He has a strong wish to make reparation to the
object he believes he has damaged. (Britton 1992, p. 37).

This passage depicts a 'moral' framework. Elements of 'tragedy' are present, that is, '
attacks on the good object' and 'damage done to it'. But these coexist with the modifying
force of the 'strong wish to make reparation' within a single mental framework. In
addition, the situation that is addressed is that of a feared loss of the good object which,
as shown, amounts to a move away from 'tragedy' proper with its irrevocable
consequences. Anticipatory fear in combination with strong reparative urges creates a '
moral' framework that undercuts the possibility of absolute aggression and hence
irrevocable damage.
A focus on the 'morality' mode of the depressive position therefore involves the
depiction of 'tragic' emotions that are not of a catastrophic primary nature, but of a
secondary and tolerable variety that is tempered and contained by the simultaneous
presence of object love, and that can be safely mobilized by the analyst:

The analyst has to try to mobilize the patient's capacity to experience love, depression and guilt ..
. Depression will then emerge in the transference situation and the whole problem of acting out
will diminish ... (Rosenfeld 1964, p. 205)

The same applies to any description of infantile states that depicts object love as
coexisting with aggression:

The infant soon begins to realize that his love and hate are directed towards one and the same
object. This enables him to experience guilt and depression and the anxieties that centre around
the fear of losing the good object. (Rosenfeld 1964, p. 201)

This is more evolved from the kind of primitive ambivalence that features in Klein's
vision. The latter is characterized by volatile states in which uncontrollable hate and
greed periodically swamp the infantile psyche, endangering love and so triggering acute,
psychotic anxiety. It is only when such volatile states no longer predominate in psychical
processes that aggression can coexist with love, as it has diminished to a point at which it
is no longer an absolute threat to it.
Whilst a focus on 'morality' does indeed take account of aspects of 'tragedy', it does
not represent the full and hence regressive significance of 'tragedy' proper, that is, the
most primitive, catastrophic depressive state. As suggested, a move away from the latter
initially manifests as fearful apprehension of irrevocable damage or loss, that is, as a
threat of potential 'tragedy'. The more this threat is described as counterbalanced by love
and reparative capacities within a mental framework, the more secure is the state that is
depicted, and the more 'morality' upholds this security. On the other hand, the more '
tragedy' proper is envisaged, the less would other elements be seen to coexist with and
hence modify its irrevocable quality, turning internal experience into the 'nightmare of
desolation' (Riviere 1936) that is depressive illness.
156 British Journal of Psychotherapy (1995) 12(2)

The Depressive Position as a Progressive Phenomenon

A focus on the `morality' mode of the depressive position and hence on its progressive
function has been generally prevalent (cf. Greenberg & Mitchell 1983), evident in the
depiction of infantile and adult states alike:

The shift from the paranoid-schizoid to the depressive position is a fundamental change from
psychotic to sane functioning ... The sense of psychic reality develops - acknowledging and
assuming responsibility for one's impulses and the state of one's internal objects (Segal 1979, p.
132)

and similarly:

The values of the paranoid-schizoid position are gradually replaced by those of the depressive
position, with relinquishment of egocentricity in favour of concern for the welfare of the loved
objects. (Meltzer 1988, p. 1)

This interest in a progressive depressive mode has naturally extended to the view of
psychical fluctuations as represented by 'P/S-D' (Bion 1962), for example, in descriptions
of psychical shifts towards or away from the depressive position:

The shifts towards taking more responsibility for one's impulses, or away from it; the emerging
of concern and guilt, and the wish to put things right, or going into flight from it; the awareness
of part of the personality, the ego, feeling able to look at and struggle with what is going on and
face anxiety, or starting to deny it ... (Joseph 1989, p. 195)

This view of the nature of the patient's shift towards depressive position functioning
has been broadly shared: `the development, for the first time, of authentic experiences of
guilt, remorse, concern for the therapist and anxiety over the possibility of repairing their
relationship' (Kernberg 1992, p. 26).
Thus in the view of the continual progressive-regressive slide between the two
positions, it is the depressive one that has always been equated with progress:

If the patient makes meaningful progress, a gradual shift towards depressive position functioning
is observed, while if he deteriorates we see a reversion to paranoid-schizoid functioning such as
occurs in negative therapeutic reactions' (Steiner 1990, p. 48)

If the regressive, negative significance of the depressive level that corresponds to `

tragedy' proper is of less interest in this thinking, part of the reason may be linked to the
fact that Klein herself made no explicit differentiation between two levels that
nevertheless emerge in her textual descriptions. Whilst, at times, she equated the
depressive position more with `morality' describing a fear of losing the loved object and
the simultaneous urge to repair it, at other times she conveyed the sense of `tragedy'
proper:

It seems to me that only when the ego has introjected the object as a whole ... is it able fully to
realize the disaster created through its sadism ... The ego then finds itself confronted with the
psychic reality that its loved objects are in a state of dissolution. (Klein 1935, p. 269)
The anxiety and guilt which the patient experiences relate to his hatred which in his mind
injured and destroyed the people he loved and caused his world to decompose. (Klein 1944, p.
837)
Both in adults and in children suffering from depression, I have discovered the dread of
harbouring dying or dead objects. (Klein 1935, p. 266)
Meira Likierman 157

The Significance of the Notion of `Overcoming'

However, it is not only in direct references of this kind that the respective
significance of `tragedy' and `morality' is indicated. The full subtleties of Klein's vision of
the two levels of the depressive position emerge in her detailed accounts of the process of
`overcoming'.
Firstly, Klein conceived of `overcoming' not as a single event, but as a process that
extends over the entire period of early childhood: `it takes the child years to overcome his
persecutory and depressive anxieties. They are again and again activated and overcome in
the course of the infantile neurosis' (Klein 1952, p. 260, my italics). The dual use of the
term `overcome' in this passage indicates two processes; repeated, small-scale
experiences of overcoming on a micro level that gradually build up to a comprehensive, `
macro' overcoming. As shown, Klein felt that the latter is achieved when `love for the
real and the internalized objects and trust in them are well established' (Klein 1935, p.
288), that is, when primitive ambivalence recedes. So that `when the infant is able to feel
that his mother will return, because his experience of regaining the loved object has
proved this to him ... he is ... beginning to overcome his depressive position' (Klein 1944,
p. 779). As this indicates, the term `overcoming' does not imply an annihilation of early
psychical states, but addresses the facet of experience that involves the outgrowing of
primitive modes of psychical functioning, the latter manifest in both paranoid-schizoid
and tragic/depressive perceptions of the world.
Therefore Klein felt that the normal individual child develops a capacity to counter
both persecutory and `tragic' perceptions of the object. The more small-scale, periodic
type of `overcoming' involves the infant's growing capacity to re-interpret continually
primitive subjectivity in the light of reassuring external proof to the contrary:

In normal circumstances the infant's growing capacity to perceive the external world and to
understand it increases his confidence in it, and his experience of external reality becomes his
most important means of overcoming his phantastic fears and his depressive feelings. (Klein
1944, p. 780)

Ultimately this capacity is essential for normality: `The extent to which external
reality is able to disprove anxieties and sorrow relating to the internal reality ... could be
taken as one of the criteria for normality' (Klein 1940, p. 346).
Furthermore, the external mother has a central role in this process:

There is, as we know, no better means of allaying a child's fears than the presence and love of his
mother ... the accumulation of such beneficial experiences is one of the main factors in his
overcoming his infantile neurosis. (Klein 1944, p. 772)

In addition, Klein envisaged such processes as operating continually in the minutiae

of commonplace interactions between the infant and its mother:

Already in the fifth or sixth month many infants respond with pleasure to `peep-bo'... The mother
of infant B made a bed-time habit of this game, thus leaving the child to go to sleep in a happy
mood. It seems that the repetition of such experiences is an important factor in helping the infant
to overcome his feelings of grief and loss. (Klein 1952, p. 258)

Klein understood such external reassurance to accompany internal processes of

restitution to the loved object. These latter were central to the instating of the loved object
inside the ego, and so were related to the process of mourning as
158 British Journal of Psychotherapy (1995) 12(2)

envisaged by Abraham (1924) and Freud (1917). However even those internal processes
were felt by Klein to depend on a continual reality-testing process specifically linked to
external reality: `the diminishing of fears through happy experiences ... enable [the infant]
to test his inner reality by means of outer reality' (Klein 1940, p. 347).
This marked importance that Klein attributed to environmental influence was
connected with the value for the psyche of a model of reality that contradicts primitive
subjectivity. Thus, for the purpose of `overcoming', what matters about external reality is
not merely its actuality, but the fact that through it the infant discovers a version of
events that is governed by alternative principles. The principles are those of duration and
signify a world that is beyond the dictates of primitive omnipotence. Since the principles
of duration are introjected, an inner life that begins as a series of ephemeral creations of
momentary omnipotent whims gradually gives way to a `world' that outlives the
omnipotent moment.
This has direct implications for the depressive position. Specifically it suggests that if
`tragic' pains and anxieties are resurrected in the mature psyche as a part of the normal
fluctuations represented by 'P/S-D' (Bion 1963), this adult reliving of early depressive
states is not normally an equivalent of the initial infantile exposure to the `loss of the
loved object', and hence of the earliest `tragedy' proper.
Yet the regressive significance of the initial scenario of `tragedy' proper remains
essential to Klein's vision. As shown, this is difficult to isolate as a phenomenon since
the initial scenario of `tragedy' with its emblematic significance continues to be essential
for the sustenance of a moral system. But, whilst the constant re-emergence of tragic
motifs in adult psychical life serves to promote `morality' and is thus a prerequisite for
healthy object relations, another such prerequisite is the continual resubmergence or
overcoming of `tragic' motifs. In the Kleinian model mental illness results from an early,
and later an overall failure to do so successfully.
Without taking account of such failure, it is not possible to understand Klein's
assertion that the depressive position is the fixation point of manic-depressive illness and
of melancholia. This leaves Kleinian theory without a full explanation of the latter
whereas, as shown, Klein explicitly offered such an explanation:

Persecutory and depressive anxieties, if excessive, may lead to severe mental illness ... These
two forms of anxiety also provide the fixation points for paranoiac, schizophrenic and manic
depressive illness in adult life. (Klein 1952, p. 269)

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