Infancy
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The Mad World of Melanie Klein (Part 2)
Klein started with the traditional idea of Subject meets Object, but she developed this idea very differently from philosophers, ending up making many strange, mad-sounding claims. Post-Kleinians used the flexibility of her framework to develop all sorts of new ideas, some of which seem at least as mad, if not madder. One of Klein’s early… Continue reading
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Why do psychoanalysts attribute complex experiences to babies?
Most psychoanalysts attribute a great deal of importance to people’s early experiences, but the stories they tell seem far removed from what we would normally say about the experiences of babies and very young children. The school of psychoanalysis that does this in the most striking (and sometimes most offensive) way is Kleinianism, so it… Continue reading
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Does it make sense to attribute complex thoughts and feelings to babies?
Psychoanalysts often attribute complex thoughts and feelings to babies, but since babies cannot speak and have a limited behavioural repertoire (compared to children and adults), this seems ridiculous. This objection resonates strongly with Wittgensteinians, who emphasise that inner processes stand in need of outward criteria. They may also note that Wittgenstein himself called into question… Continue reading
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Are Children Really Polymorphously Perverse?
In his Three Essays on Sexuality, Freud claims that children are polymorphously perverse. What does this deliberately provocative statement mean? Freud argues that the sexual instinct (or more accurately, drive (Trieb)) is active in human beings from the very start of life. He acknowledges that infants and children are not physically capable of experiencing the… Continue reading
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The World is My World – Wittgenstein vs Winnicott
“The world as it presents itself is of no meaning to the newly developing human being unless it is created as well as discovered.” Donald Winnicott How should we think about our relationship with the external world and with other people? Since Descartes, philosophers have started with the experiencing subject and then run into difficulties.… Continue reading