The Positions of Melanie Klein

What does a bad break up have to do with immigration policy? Why is today's Superman less perfect but more "Super?" In this episode, we explore the Paranoid Position and the Depressed Position, ways that we have of managing our fears of being attacked, ideas about good and evil, and why sadness may be the key to resolving conflicts in both our personal lives and in our society as a whole. Melanie Klein is one of the most important theorists, and controversial figures, in the history of psychoanalysis.  Although she thought of herself as a strict adherent to Sigmund Freud, she made radical assertions about the inner lives of infants and used these ideas to develop concepts about how we manage primal feelings of anger and fear and hatred. Her work is the foundation of what is now knows as the Object Relations School.