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objects in different places, in order to avoid conflict between them. The essence of paranoid- schizoid defenses is that they are invoked with a sense of omnipotence, like omnipotent denial of realities, particularly emotional object relation realities. The depressive position involves its own sense of conflict. Here the conflict between love and hate begins to be resolved on the side of love for the object. Phantasy functions omnipotently with regards to reality until a relation between the two is established, as happens in creativity, for phantasies that do not communicate with the reality of others’ experiences often produce failed forms of art. In the depressive position, omnipotence must be given up in order to allow for the recognition of reality, the separateness and the uniqueness of the object. This requires tolerating guilt, for guilt is the preeminent emotion of conflict. Guilt arises at the intersection where desire and reality clash. Guilt is the recognition of the irrationality and anti-sociability of one’s primitive desires; it represents the moment of recognition of the object’s importance, separate from one’s desires. Guilt mediates the conflict between narcissism and reality, both internal and external. When love and guilt towards one’s object are intolerable, Klein theorizes a third mental position: the manic position, which conflicts with the depressive position in that, it is contemptuous of the object, attempts to control the object and to triumph over the needed object by denying its importance. In its conflict with the depressive state of mind that values love over hate, the manic position regresses to the use of paranoid-schizoid defenses to combat the guilt and pain of loving. Finally, for Klein’s theory of conflict, it is important to mention at least one aspect of the agon that takes place between the ego and the superego. This aspect involves Herbert Rosenfeld’s (1964) and Donald Meltzer’s (1966) ideas of projective identification into an internal object. According to Rosenfeld, the superego often functions as a gang – such as the Mafia or the Nazis – seeking to control and punish the ego for not being perfect. This is one manifestation of a primary conflict in the psyche, between the ego and the superego. The ego is initially small and helpless, like the infant; in this state, the ego is in enormous need of an object that can help it survive. This needed object is often given omnipotent qualities, to rectify the ego’s fear of its lack of power to fend for itself. As in Freud’s theory, Klein believes that the ego creates its initial view of its objects under the glow of omnipotence. Having an omnipotent object, the superego, makes the ego believe that even if it realizes that it is not itself possessed of omnipotence, its superego is. This causes the ego to eliminate its own separate existence and merge with its fantasied omnipotent internal object, thus projective identification with an internal object. The ego gives up its independence to feel omnipotently protected, in a sort of Faustian bargain. Hereby, the ego attempts to resolve its conflict of life and death instincts, love and hate emotions, omnipotence and reality, with a simple wave of the wand of projective identification.
III. D. Wilfred R. Bion While Klein expanded Freud’s notion of conflict to include object relations–both internal and external–Bion (1955) expanded the theory of conflict into the area of mental
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