Posted by badhaircut on January 2, 2005, at 10:21:11
In reply to Re: Idealizing, posted by Toph on January 2, 2005, at 7:07:03
> the notion of dependency as pathological puzzled me
Yeah. I think the overall tone of Klein & those folks makes it sound like "normal" babies are inherently pathological. It's like everything that goes on in a baby's mind is on the edge of psychosis. That's the way it reads: every baby is beside itself with overwhelming hatred of the goodness in the mother's breast and so on.
But they also thought that dependence continues throughout life even in "healthy" people — it's just that the adult depends more on the *internalized* good parent. My understanding is that object relations people try to get the client to see that the nurturing, protective surrogate is already *inside* her: she doesn't need to cling so desperately to other people.
So it's not that dependence should be stopped or go away so much as that it should be redirected inward. At least, that's my understanding.
-bhc
(Toph: I get Melanie Klein, Anna Freud; ... who is Margaret? Thanks!)
poster:badhaircut
thread:436049
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041228/msgs/436747.html