3 Modalities of Object Relations

Through her development and deepening of Freud's works, M. Klein contributed the discovery of two basic positions corresponding to two different but dynamic and co-existing modalities of the organisation and structuring of behaviour: the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. Each position has its characteristic anxieties, objects and defences.

Concerning the object relation, the partial object relation predominates in the paranoid-schizoid position, which encompasses the first three or four months of life, while in the depressive position the relation is with a total object. That is to say, in the former position, experiences of gratification and frustration are perceived and kept separate as corresponding to two totally different objects (good and bad).

M. Klein's recognition of these two positions, however, has not led her to fall into a simplistic schematism, since she herself provides elements that facilitate an investigation and problematisation of her own hypotheses. Thus, although she postulates that the child's world is constructed or integrated on the basis of isolated elements or experiences (partial objects), she affirms in her article ‘Some theoretical conclusions regarding the emotional life of the infant’ (Klein, 1952a) that

There are, however, grounds for assuming that even during the first three or four months of life the good and the bad object are not wholly distinct from one another in the infant's mind.52 … The mother's breast, both in its good and bad aspects, also seems to merge for him with her bodily presence; and the relation to her as a person is thus gradually built up from the earliest stage onwards.53