Melanie Klein, “The Importance of Symbol-Formation in the Development of the Ego” (1930) (VI)

From Anxiety to Defense (I)

In the last entries we attempted to clarify the paths which for Klein lead from the infant’s aggression to its experiences of anxiety. We can now return to the passage we’ve been examining and consider those lines that concern defense. The passage, again:

“The excess of sadism gives rise to anxiety and sets in motion the ego's earliest modes of defense. Freud writes: ‘It may well be that, before ego and id have become sharply differentiated and before a super-ego has been developed, the mental apparatus employs different modes of defense from those which it practices after these levels of organization have been reached.’ According to what I have found in analysis the earliest defense set up by the ego has reference to two sources of danger: the subject's own sadism and the object which is attacked. This defense, in conformity with the degree of the sadism, is of a violent character and differs fundamentally from the later mechanism of repression. In relation to the subject's own sadism the defense implies expulsion, whereas in relation to the object it implies destruction” (220)

I would like in this entry to make a few observations.

First, we will notice a feature of this “earliest defense set up by the ego” that, while obvious, doesn’t receive any explicit comment from Klein. At their core, this defense helps the infant manage anxiety — the infant’s aggression is distressing to it only because of the anxiety it occasions. (If per impossible the infant could feel and express its sadism without incurring anxiety, it would presumably have no need to defend against it.) It is noteworthy, then, that while this early defense, and defenses more generally, have essentially to do with diminishing anxiety, they do not manage or influence this anxiety directly. Instead, according to Klein’s account, this early defense directly addresses either aggression or the object of aggression, and precisely because both of these stir anxiety. Again: “the earliest defense set up by the ego has reference to two sources of danger: the subject's own sadism and the object which is attacked.” (By contrast, one imagines that a mechanism like dissociation might directly defend against anxiety, by simply expelling the latter from awareness. Such a defense, though, does not appear in Klein’s thinking — at least in this essay.)

A second observation: the defense is “violent”: “This defense, in conformity with the degree of the sadism, is of a violent character…In relation to the subject's own sadism the defense implies expulsion, whereas in relation to the object it implies destruction.” With the descriptor “violent,” Klein seems to have in mind, not only the considerable strength, crudeness, or efficacy of this defense, but beyond this some unique quality in the defense itself. This again suggests something self-evident about Klein’s position that does not receive special attention, namely: this primitive defense does not merely guard against aggression; it is itself a mode or expression of this aggression. To put this another way: “expulsion” and “destruction” are both essentially “violent” ways of handling one’s own “violence” — including that portion of the infant’s violence it ascribes to its object.

A third observation, perhaps less self-evident, follows from these reflections. Klein will suggest it again, more clearly, in one of the essay’s concluding statements:

"It is only in the later stages of the Oedipus conflict that the defense against the libidinal impulses makes its appearance; in the earlier stages it is against the accompanying destructive impulses that the defense is directed. The earliest defense set up by the ego is directed against the subject's own sadism and the object attacked, both of these being regarded as sources of danger. This defense is of a violent character, different from the mechanism of repression” (232)

Now it is worth recalling that when Freud first addressed himself to the question of mental defense, he had not even solidified his first concept and classification of drives, let alone that second concept and classification to which he was later impelled (one embracing the life- and death-drives). Indeed, the earlier definition of drive (i.e. inner excitations pressing for discharge) and classification (self-preserving drives, like hunger, over against libidinal drives), left no room for such a primary drive as Thanatos, whose “end” is dissolution and which is manifested psychologically as aggression.

Hence within that early Freudian context, at least, Klein’s conjecture that the first “defenses” put into operation are directed against the infant’s aggression, and only later against libidinal impulses, would have made no sense at all. For at that point in Freud’s development, not only were libidinal drives sui generis in demanding defense, and particularly the defense of repression. (As far as I can tell, the “self-preserving” drives lodged no such demand.) There is no death drive at all, the manifestations of which could precede “libidinal impulse.”

In the next entry, I will continue to examine the connection between anxiety and defense in Klein’s thinking.