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<title>Reparation (psychoanalysis)</title>
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<span id="openzim-page-title" class="mw-page-title-main"><span class="mw-page-title-main">Reparation (psychoanalysis)</span></span>
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<div id="mw-content-text" class="mw-body-content mw-content-ltr" lang="en" dir="ltr"><div class="mw-content-ltr mw-parser-output" lang="en" dir="ltr"><p>The term <b>reparation</b> was used by <a href="Melanie_Klein" title="Melanie Klein">Melanie Klein</a> (1921) to indicate a psychological process of making mental repairs to a damaged internal world.<sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-1"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>1<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> In <a href="Object_relations_theory" title="Object relations theory">object relations theory</a>, it represents a key part of the movement from the <a href="Paranoid-schizoid_position" class="mw-redirect" title="Paranoid-schizoid position">paranoid-schizoid position</a> to the <a href="Depressive_position" class="mw-redirect" title="Depressive position">depressive position</a> — the pain of the latter helping to fuel the urge to reparation.<sup id="cite_ref-2" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-2"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>2<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>
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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Klein">Klein</h2></div>
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</style><div role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable">Main article: <a href="Splitting_(psychology)#Melanie_Klein" title="Splitting (psychology)">Splitting (psychology) § Melanie Klein</a></div>
<p><a href="Melanie_Klein" title="Melanie Klein">Melanie Klein</a> considered the ability to recognise our destructive impulses towards those we love and to make reparation for the damage we have caused them, to be an essential part of mental health. A key condition for that to take place is the recognition of one's separateness from one's parents,<sup id="cite_ref-Segal89_3-0" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-Segal89-3"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>3<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> which makes possible the reparative attempt to restore their inner representations, however damaged they may be felt to be.<sup id="cite_ref-4" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-4"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>4<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>
</p><p>Acceptance of reality, inner and outer, forms a major part of the process and involves both abandoning fantasies of <a href="Omnipotence" title="Omnipotence">omnipotence</a><sup id="cite_ref-5" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-5"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>5<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> and accepting the independent existence of one's objects of attachment.<sup id="cite_ref-Segal89_3-1" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-Segal89-3"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>3<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>
</p><p>Where the damage done to the internal world is felt by a patient to be extreme, however, the task of reparation may seem too great, which is one of the obstacles facing the analytic attempt at cure.<sup id="cite_ref-6" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-6"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>6<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>
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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Manic_reparation">Manic reparation</h2></div>
<p>Kleinian thought distinguishes between true reparation and manic reparation, the latter being driven by guilt rather than overcoming it.<sup id="cite_ref-7" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-7"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>7<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> Manic reparation denies the pain and concern of feeling guilty by using magical methods of repair<sup id="cite_ref-8" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-8"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>8<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> which maintain omnipotent control of the object in question, and refuse to allow it its separate existence. Thus manic reparation has to be endlessly repeated, since success would free the object from the manic person's (contemptuous) power.<sup id="cite_ref-9" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-9"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>9<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>
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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Winnicott">Winnicott</h2></div>
<div role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable">Main article: <a href="Donald_Winnicott" title="Donald Winnicott">Donald Winnicott</a></div>
<p>Donald Winnicott made his own distinctive contribution to the role of reparation in the "personalising" of the individual, the move from the ruthless use of the external object to a sense of concern.<sup id="cite_ref-10" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-10"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>10<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> Winnicott focused on the way at a certain stage of development a feeling of guilt or concern begins to appear after the wholehearted instinctual experience of a feed. But once the reparative gesture—a smile, a gift—has been successfully acknowledged by the mother, Winnicott writes: "The breast (body, mother) is now mended and the day's work is done. Tomorrow's instincts can be awaited with limited fear".<sup id="cite_ref-11" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-11"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>11<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> The child's contribution is a way of accepting the debt owed to the mother, for their survival and their participation in the work of reparation.<sup id="cite_ref-Gaitanidis83_12-0" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-Gaitanidis83-12"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>12<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> If, on the other hand, the reparative gesture is not accepted, the infant is left with a feeling of depression or meaninglessness.<sup id="cite_ref-Gaitanidis83_12-1" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-Gaitanidis83-12"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>12<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>
</p><p>A similar dynamic may later appear between patient and analyst, with the making of progress being offered as a means of reparation.<sup id="cite_ref-13" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-13"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>13<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>
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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Art">Art</h2></div>
<p>Kleinians considered that artistic creation was driven by the <a href="Fantasy_(psychology)" title="Fantasy (psychology)">phantasy</a> of repairing the loved object (mother).<sup id="cite_ref-14" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-14"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>14<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>
</p><p><a href="Marion_Milner" title="Marion Milner">Marion Milner</a> in the <a href="Middle_Group" class="mw-redirect" title="Middle Group">Independent</a> tradition also saw art as a way of both symbolizing and enacting inner reparation;<sup id="cite_ref-15" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-15"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>15<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> but was criticised by Kleinians for giving too large a role to the omnipotent feelings of the artist in reparation.<sup id="cite_ref-16" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-16"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>16<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>
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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="See_also">See also</h2></div>
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<ul><li><a href="Donald_Meltzer" title="Donald Meltzer">Donald Meltzer</a></li>
<li><a href="Melancholia" title="Melancholia">Melancholia</a></li>
<li><a href="Sublimation_(psychology)" title="Sublimation (psychology)">Sublimation</a></li></ul></div>
<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="References">References</h2></div>
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<li id="cite_note-1"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-1">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Lani A. Gerity, <i>Creativity and the Dissociated Patient</i> (1999) p. 20</span>
</li>
<li id="cite_note-2"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-2">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Robert Caper, <i>Immaterial Facts</i> (2000) p. 117</span>
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<li id="cite_note-Segal89-3"><span class="mw-cite-backlink">^ <a href="#cite_ref-Segal89_3-0"><sup><i><b>a</b></i></sup></a> <a href="#cite_ref-Segal89_3-1"><sup><i><b>b</b></i></sup></a></span> <span class="reference-text">Hanna Segal, <i>Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein</i> (London 1964) p. 89</span>
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<li id="cite_note-4"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-4">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Richard Appignanesi ed., <i>Introducing Melanie Klein</i> (Cambridge 2006) p. 106</span>
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<li id="cite_note-5"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-5">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Lesley Caldwell ed., <i>Winnicott and the Psychoanalytic Tradition</i> (London 2007) p. 25</span>
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<li id="cite_note-6"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-6">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Mary Jacobus, <i>The Poetics of Psychoanalysis: In the Wake of Klein</i> (Oxford 2005) p. 39</span>
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<li id="cite_note-7"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-7">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Hyam Sydney Klein/Joan Symington, <i>Imprisoned Pain and its Transformation</i> (London 2000) p. 19</span>
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<li id="cite_note-8"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-8">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Hanna Segal, <i>Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein</i> (London 1964), p. 84-5 and p. 88</span>
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<li id="cite_note-9"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-9">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Hanna Segal, <i>Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein</i> (London 1964), p. 83</span>
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<li id="cite_note-10"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-10">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Quoted in Janet Malcolm, <i>Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession</i> (London 1988) p. 34-5</span>
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<li id="cite_note-11"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-11">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Quoted in Adam Phillips, <i>On Flirtation</i> (London 1994) p. 17 and p. 62</span>
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<li id="cite_note-Gaitanidis83-12"><span class="mw-cite-backlink">^ <a href="#cite_ref-Gaitanidis83_12-0"><sup><i><b>a</b></i></sup></a> <a href="#cite_ref-Gaitanidis83_12-1"><sup><i><b>b</b></i></sup></a></span> <span class="reference-text">A. Gaitanidis/P. Curk, <i>Narcissism: A Critical Reader</i> (London 2007) p. 83–84</span>
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<li id="cite_note-13"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-13">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">I. Salzberger-Wittenberg, <i>Psychoanalytic Insight and Relationships</i> (1984) p. 92</span>
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<li id="cite_note-14"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-14">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.psychoanalysis-and-therapy.com/human_nature/glover/index.html">Nicola Glover "Psychoanalytic Aesthetics: The British School"</a></span>
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<li id="cite_note-15"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-15">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Lesley Caldwell ed., <i>Winnicott and the Psychoanalytic Tradition</i> (London 2007) p. 31</span>
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<li id="cite_note-16"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-16">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Hinshelwood, Chapter 3 n54, in <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.psychoanalysis-and-therapy.com/human_nature/glover/index.html">Glover</a></span>
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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Further_reading">Further reading</h2></div>
<p>Melanie Klein, <i>Love, Guilt and Reparation</i> (2013)
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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="External_links">External links</h2></div>
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