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“An Introduction to the Kleinian Technique in Psychoanalysis”
Hanna Segal, M.B.CH.B.
January 10, 1966 Meeting
Kleinian technique is psychoanalytical and is carried out according to the principles laid down by Freud. The interpretations are centered on the transference situation—the level determined by the patient's maximum unconscious anxiety. Kleinian technique is the same in dealing with psychotic or prepsychotic patients, in contrast with the parameters used by classical Freudian analysts in such cases. Changes in the nature of the interpretations and of emphasis show an evolution from classical interpretations.
As a result of her work with children, Klein felt the roots of the oedipal complex and the superego reached back to the second oral stage. Early development was influenced greatly by introjection, projection and splitting (preceding repression). These primitive levels of experience could be understood in the adult through the conceptualization of unconscious fantasy. Unconscious fantasy is the “psychic equivalent of instincts”—always active, experienced somatically and mentally, coloring reality, and developing derivatives as do instincts. Furthermore, fantasties are the subjective experiencing of mental mechanisms including those used for defense. Interpretation of fantasies is thus interpretation of defense and anxiety-ladened content.
The structure of ego and superego, partly determined by unconscious fantasies in the past, can be made accessible in the analytic situation. This view of unconscious fantasy affects the technique in that unconscious fantasy in the transference situation is interpreted from the start—both to lessen the unconscious anxiety and to focus the patient's attention on the central role of the analyst in his unconscious. Fantasy interpretations involve analyses of the original sources, defensive aspects, and the relation to external past and present realities.
Dr. Segal then described Klein's paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. T