"Melanie Klein described two states of mind, established in very early infancy, that form the basis of how we experience the world throughout life. In one mode, grimly labelled paranoid-schizoid, people cope with intense anxieties and threatening fears by relying on the more rudimentary, primitive end of the defensive spectrum, employing principally splitting, projective identification and idealization. This, in turn, leads to patterns of thought and experience characterized by blame, scapegoating, idealization, persecution and other distorted perceptions. When operating from this mode, the ability to engage in interpersonal relations is seriously compromised, and concrete thinking leads to rigidity and loss of creativity." "This is the position thought to be held by the infant generally in the first three to four months of infancy, The word Paranoid refers to the leading anxiety at this period, which is fear of annihilation of the self. Ultimately this is considered, in continuation of Freud's conjectures concerning an original destructive force in nature, to be a result of the initial projection outwards of the infant's own death-impulses, constituting the origin of its aggression.
In the Paranoid-Schizoid position the main defence employed against the terrors of dissolution is that of splitting, hence the term ‘Schizoid’."
Poster Comment:
I have for many years known there is something very wrong with the human race. Look at all the people who blame everything on conspiracies, no matter how ridiculous.