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the development of ego and super-ego is bound up with processes of introjection and projection, they are inextricably linked from the outset, and since their development is vitally influenced by instinctual drives, all three regions of the mind are from the beginning of life in the closest interaction. I realize that in speaking here about the three regions of the mind I am not keeping within the topic suggested for discussion; but my conception of earliest infancy makes it impossible for me to consider exclusively the mutual influences of ego and id” (Klein, 1952, p. 59) Thus, at the time when Ego psychology primarily focused on the ego’s relation to the id and how it navigated adaptation to the external world, Klein’s object relations theory focused primarily on the ego’s relation to the superego, and how this relationship was determined by the formative connection between the instinctual impulses and the superego’s internal objects. Several years later, David Rapaport (1957) commented on this difference: “Ever since the introduction of the structural theory by Freud, theoretical interest has centered on ego psychology and neglected the exploration of the superego” (Rapaport, 1957/1977, p. 686). Klein’s theory had its first point of demarcation in her 1928 paper, significantly titled “The Early Stages of the Oedipus Conflict”. Referring to Freud’s concept of the Oedipus complex as a ‘conflict’, Klein theorized that the Oedipus complex as described by Freud –which for him occurs during the phallic phase between the ages of 3-5–has complex precursors in the earlier psychosexual stages focused on oral and anal issues. For Klein, the Oedipus conflict begins in the first year of life, and there is no “pre-oedipal” or “pre-conflictual” phase. This poses important conceptual issues. For example, the Oedipus complex essentially signifies any triangular structure of relations since, from the moment the infant is aware of father along with the mother, there is a triangle. However, Hanna Segal (1997) points out that as soon as the infant makes an organizational decision to separate the good experiences of mother from frustrating ones, there is a triangle of infant and a good and a bad mommy. This form of organization Klein calls splitting, which is one of the primary ways in which the early (and later) psyche manages conflict. Splitting objects into two parts, or splitting between different objects into good and bad categories, are primary forms of organizing one’s world. Splitting functions in tandem with projective identification, which in phantasy gets rid of incompatible elements in the mind by projecting them from the internal world to the external. Both splitting and projective identification are employed to manage one’s internal and external world. Along with the correspondent introjective identification, these processes form an alive mental-social loop that entails dealing with conflict as well as executing normal mental functioning. This projective and introjective circle of life along the analogy of respiratory inhalation and exhalation–demonstrates Klein’s idea of the innate nature of psychic conflict linked with vital mental functions. In this process, the ego forms its initial relationship with the conflicting instincts in the id of life and death. In its primary search for an external object to help in its struggle for survival, the infant projects the instinctual impulses, in phantasy– which Klein and Susan Isaacs (1952, p. 58) say is the mental corollary of the instincts–into its external objects and then, introjects this combination of the actual external object, blended with the fantasied object, into the superego, where it functions henceforth as an internal object.
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