The Notion of Hate at Work - Essay Example

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isnt part of ourselves doesnt disturb us." Hermann Hesse I have hatedwith a passion one of my immediate managers for some time now. He has affected every fiber of my being in that whenever I see him my sole desire is to ‘retch’ (preferably on him). It was only after I left that particular place of employment that I had the opportunity to analyze my deep seated hatred for this man. In retrospect I discovered that indeed the man I hated demonstrated some dimensions of my internal make-up which I had tried to repress. The main source of my hatred was not so much the man as a whole but one dimension of his personality that is his inability to lead and direct a group of people to become a productive team. Melanie Klein refers to this concept of splitting the individual into good and bad as ‘part objects.’ I realized that perhaps I was never chosen to be a leader by those in authority because of inadequacies that were seen in my general attitude. I found the man to me inefficient, incompetent, lacking in tact, full of himself, and always afraid to make a decision on his own. Obviously, these are essential prerequisites for a leader. On analysis of this list I became conscious of the fact that I also lacked many of these qualities. Possibly Melanie Klein was correct in her concept of projective identification. It was only after I attempted to put myself into the shoes of the ‘hated man’ that I was able to identify that the major hated parts of him could also be found in me. In actuality, the parts of him that were not a part of me really had no impact on my feelings towards him. For example, he liked to smile and tried to please everyone. Certainly these were not part of my psyche. Hence, the statement ‘What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us’ was definitely true in my analysis of my hatred for this man. Indeed I hated the parts of him which were found to be also in me and disregarded all the other parts. Understanding the parts of me that I hate is the one strategy that is helping me to come to terms with this man and conscious manipulation of my projection has allowed me to face him without the overwhelming desire to ‘retch’ becoming a reality. Both Anna Freud and Melanie Klein were the originators of child psychoanalysis. They standardized the treatment of children with psychological problems. Nevertheless, their methods were different so much so that the Berlin Society in the early 1900s declared Melanie Klein’s approach as unorthodox and Anna Freud’s as orthodox. 1. Anna Freud and Melanie Klein differed in some fundamental areas. Freud believed in allowing children the freedom to organize their own play, to move, to learn and to express themselves. Nonetheless she believed that the therapist should be an authoritarian figure in the life of the child. Further, Freud considered the children’s symbolic development was not as advanced as the adult hence the child was not yet able to express his problem verbally to therapist. Therefore, communication between the therapist and child were seen as the major hurdle in therapy. Klein, on the other hand, had no problem with communication between the therapist and the child because Klein used the children’s drawings and play activities to unearth children’s unconscious thoughts. In addition, Klein believed that therapist could analyze children’s non verbal cues. Thus a major opposition to Freud is that Klein replaced Freud’s free association with play therapy. She clearly was able to analyze children’s thoughts through play, drawings and non-verbal cues whereas Freud concluded that children’s thoughts and behaviors could not be analyzed. In addition, Klein put the oedipal stage at an earlier time than Freud. Another main difference is that whereas the death drive was considered to be part of Freud’s later stages of development, Klein deemed this drive to be of primary importance during infancy. Unlike Freud’s belief that deviance could be understood through psychosexual development Klein believed that one could analyze the fear and aggressive behavior of infants. Moreover, Klein also veered from Freud in that she believed that the development of the superego began from infancy. Contrastingly, Freud left the development of the superego for later on in life. 2. Klein proposed that anxiety could be experienced from two positions, namely depressive position and paranoid schizoid position. She claims that these two states begin from infancy, in particular, within the first four to six months of life the infant is said to experience the paranoid schizoid position. Klein believed that subsequent to the paranoid schizoid position the depressive position occurred. Klein claimed that individuals are able to shift from one position to the next throughout life and some people operate mainly in the paranoid schizoid mode for more time than depressive position. The schizoid dimension of the paranoid schizoid position is built on the basis of ‘splitting’. Splitting refers to separating good parts from bad parts of an object. Klein claims that splitting at the infant stage is functional because it keeps the good from being extinguished by the bad. Klein believed that at a later stage when the ego has had the opportunity to be developed, only then will the infant be able to view objects as a whole and not in parts. At this stage the individual will be able to handle conflict better. Clearly Klein was somewhat flawed in her thinking about the splitting of good and bad. An infant who is constantly been rejected by the mother would develop anxieties that would last throughout their adult lives. The infant usually fails to thrive if there is more bad than good from his immediate care givers. Although as the child develops he/she may develop an ability to handle conflict, at the infant stage the child is unable to cope with this conflict at this time. What then is the infant’s and later adult course of action? Klein had no direct response. The author of this paper believes that the infant is also resilient enough on its own to understand and develop coping strategies such as sucking his thumb during the absence of the breast and the like. 3. Although both Freud and Klein agreed that individuals develop sexually, they differed on their conceptualization of sexuality. Klein associated sexuality with her object relation theory which emphasized relationships with others. For Freud though Eros and Thanatos fuelled one’s sexuality. Further, whereas under Freud’s school of thought , the breast was seen as an object of sexuality for the infant, for Klein the breast was seen as an object that could be good or bad based on the satisfaction of the infant’s needs. For Freud the Oedipal stage occurred when the child was around four to five but Klein believed that an infant was able to experience this oedipal phase. However, Klein viewed sexuality in the infant as innocent and simple and totally different from the adult experience of sexuality. 4. Klein believed that envy was the result of the infant viewing the breast as hoarding milk and preventing the infant from receiving gratification. This caused the infant to envy the breast and the owner of the breast. Projection identification refers to one removing a ‘bad object’ from self into another individual. This ‘bad object’ becomes a part of the other person and so the infant is able to remove this ‘bad’ from within self and project to the mother. The mother then acts as an agent which could allow the infant to‘re-internalize’ this ‘bad’ into self in a more acceptable form at a later time in life. (ChangingMinds.org , 2007) The author of this paper believes that Klein’s ideas of envy and projection identification appear to be impractical in today’s world. It appears that the individual is constantly been acted upon by an external. There does not appear to be any room in Klein’s theory for the operation of self - the cognitive and creative dimension of self that would allow the infant to find alternative sources of comfort and completely different ways of solving a problem appear to be absent from this theory. References Boeree, George. (1998). Personality Theories: Anna Freud 1895- 1982. Retrieved on July 7, 2008 from www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/annafreud.html ChangingMinds.org. (2007). Melanie Klein. Retrieved on July 7, 2008 from http://changingminds.org/disciplines/psychoanalysis/theorists/klein.htm Read More