Lillian Hellman: The Uses of Rage

Kohut (1972) views the experiential content of narcissistic rage as indicating that “the aggression was mobilized in the service of an archaic grandiose self and that it is deployed within the framework of an archaic perception of reality.” He goes on to say that “the maintenance of self-esteem-and indeed of the self-depends on the unconditional availability of the approving-mirroring functions of an admiring self-object, or on the ever present opportunity for a merger with an idealized one.” Solnit (1970) notes that aggressive behavior during the second half of the first year is a “revitalization and redirecting of the drive energies that had been dampened or deprived of attachment to and investment in the world of love objects.”

Referring specifically to children recovering from the effects of maternal deprivation, Solnit suggests that if the mother is not available initially as a libidinal object or as a conventional object for venting the infant's frustration, the child may not learn to express aggression and that destructive impulses may become attached to the self. In a similar vein, Melanie Klein (1935) regards ego integration during the first year as necessitating the fusion of the good and bad aspects of the mother, with the resulting fear that the infant's destructive impulses will harm the mother, now perceived as a whole object. This fear, in turn, is seen by Klein as leading to depressive affect based on guilt and attempts at reparation through love.

Klein traces the origin of incestuous oedipal feelings to the reparation process, rather than to sexual impulses, as such. Although Klein's attribution of ego processes to the early months of infant life is of questionable validity, as Brenner (1968) has pointed out, her assertion that the Oedipus complex may appear as early as the second year is not unreasonable. Klein argues, in this context, that the little girl's attraction to the father may be a direct consequence of weaning and the onset of toilet train