How did the approaches of Melanie Klein and Heinz Kohut differ from each other, and from Freudian psychoanalysis?
The work of Melanie Klein provides an excellent example in this respect. Grown as an uninvited child, she faced great depression. Her parents always had ignored her. Strangely, she alienated her own adult daughter, who later grew to become an analyst. She claimed that Melanie had always interfered in her wards’ lives and as a result of this her son committed suicide.
The main focus of the Klein’s work was on the mother-child relationship. She proposed that the initial 6 months are necessary in this relationship. According to her, the connection between the infant and the mother is not based on sexual terms but on the cognitive and the social terms. The mother’s breasts, if has satisfied the infant’s id, is proved to be favorable, else it is hostile.
Hence, these 6 months, when the child entirely depends on mother for food, the basic relationship of infant with other objects is rooted. Heinz Kohut, an Austrian-American psychoanalyst, was best known for the establishment of self psychology, which was a powerful school of thought within the psychoanalytic or psychodynamic theory. It helped in the transformation of the modern analytical practice and dynamic approaches towards the treatment.
After the World War II got over, the main focus of the Freudian analysis was on the individual guilt. It favored not to consider the new zeitgeist; though, earlier he attempted to remain faithful to the conventional analytic perspective with which he became associated and observed himself as different. Later the theory of id, superego and ego of Freud was rejected by Kohut and many other disciplines.
Many psychologists were in the favor of Freud’ theory of psychoanalysis; however, some of them favored its modification and extension. Amongst the Freud’s loyalists were his daughter, Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. They believed in the extension of the ego theory. They proposed that the individuals are attendants of ego, rather than the id.