Chapter 5 The Views of Melanie Klein and Her School on Separation Anxiety and Object-Loss

Separation anxiety phenomena are very important in the theory and practice of Melanie Klein and her school. The work of Klein is, as we know, a continuation of the early psychoanalytic research begun in 1911 by Abraham on depression and manic-depressive states. Abraham's research had preceded Freud's and had occasioned the latter's writing of ‘Mourning and melancholia’ (1917e [1915]).

Drawing on her own experience of analysing very young children and also using her self-analysis of her own bereavements, Melanie Klein discovered the early roots of depression in infancy, and ascribed to mourning a central role not only in psychopathology but also in normal development.

We shall give a brief account of the place of separation anxiety and object-loss in Klein in the light of the fundamental concepts contributed by her, such as the early Oedipus complex and the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, in relation to anxiety, projective identification and envy. We shall then discuss the contributions of the principal members of her school—in particular, Rosenfeld, Segal, Bion and Meltzer.

In Melanie Klein, separation anxiety and object-loss must be seen in the context of her conception of object relations and her own theory of anxiety.

In her view, the situation at the beginning of life is not one of non-differentiation between ego and object as it was for Freud (primary narcissism); Melanie Klein believed that the perception of the ego and of the object exist from birth, anxiety being a direct response to the internal work of the death instinct. She considers that this anxiety takes two forms: a persecutory anxiety which

belongs to the paranoid-schizoid position, and a depressive anxiety which is proper to the depressive position. As Segal (1979) points out:

The fundamental anxiety about the loss of the object postulated by Freud could, according to her, be experienced in either way, or, of course, in any combination of