The Elusive Good Object

Abstract

Melanie Klein theorized idealization in two distinct ways. In the first instance, she maintained that "The whole of [the infant's] instinctual desires and his unconscious phantasies imbue the breast with qualities going far beyond the actual nourishment it affords," and she emphasized that the libidinally invested breast, when introjected, forms “the core of the ego,” Klein theorizes that the original good object must be experienced as ideal. But she also asserted that idealization serves as a defensive exaggeration of the object's goodness: "Idealization is bound up with the splitting of the object, for the good aspects of the breast are exaggerated as a safeguard against the fear of the persecuting breast"; that is, idealization affords a defense against persecutory anxieties stemming from the infant's projection of hateful impulses and hate-filled parts of the self into the mother. The author argues that when idealization is operating in this way it makes the good object an elusive one. A detailed clinical example is used to describe idealization as it permeates and governs the analytic relationship. The analyst's eventual capacity to discern the workings of idealization, in the second sense in which Klein means it, brought about significant change for the patient and allowed for the consolidation of a good object.