These are excerpts on the subjects from notes taken from Carveth’s lecture “Introduction to Kleinian Theory 5”.
Manic defenses are manifested to protect the ego from despair. It is a means of being omnipotent, and is very much belongs to the paranoid-schizoid position as defined by Melanie Klein.
Inability to deal with loss, leads to symptoms, like depression, and behaviors, like rage. This is a sign of a regression into an existence of black-white thinking, in which there are projections made towards the outside world to ward off unbearable feeling. It is attack on psychic reality, in an effort to control the external objects.
Read also : Making Reparation and mourning as the road to mental healing.
Why the need to control, triumph?
These acts defend the self against realization of dependency. It defends against loss. Triumph is needed so that the person defeats the object, so that there is that “I do not have to care for the object”– which is an aggressive and dangerous condition.
This kind of thinking also serves to ward off envy. Hence it is better to come to terms with one’s feelings of envy, so that on can use it constructively, like for self improvement, than to avoid feelings of envy by trying to dominate and destroy the other.
Contempt is there to deny the object’s value …the object is rendered not worthy of guilt. Contempt justifies the abuse and annihilation of the other.
There is also “manic” in the culture we live in. Our culture as we know it, is one that seems to put taboo on tenderness.
Read also : Conformity and Obedience: Slippery Slope to Dehumanization of the Other and Privacy as Personal Control.
Quote from the 18th Century on Control of the Other
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) in Social Contract 1762:
“Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer.”
Notable notes:
Interesting points (at the last 5 mins of the video) on guilt, control and being omnipotent.
Strategies for dealing with the object related
From Britton’s Sex Death Superego
- The Schizoid withdraws from the object
- The borderline colonizes the object
- The Hysteric impersonates
From Carveth
- The psychotic denies the reality of the
- The pervert castrates the object#
- The psychopath destroy
- The neurotic acknowledge dependence and guilt towards and suffers from the conflicts
- The healthy person repairs loves depends on and sacrifices for good object but also prepared to hate the bad object
Bibliography
Carveth, D. (2016) Introduction to Kleinian Theory 5. YouTube Video. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/VxdWHU1wrBY on 12.2017.