The Psychic Life of Fragments: Splitting from Ferenczi to Klein*

Abstract

The present paper starts from the reflection that there is a curious "phenomenological gap" in psychoanalysis when it comes to processes of splitting and to describing the "life" of psychic fragments resulting from processes of splitting. In simpler terms, we are often in a position to lack a precise understanding of what is being split and how the splitting occurs. I argue that although Melanie Klein's work is often engaged when talking of splitting (particularly through discussions on identification, projection and projective identification), there are some important phenomenological opacities in her construction. I show that by orchestrating a dialogue between Melanie Klein and Sándor Ferenczi, we arrive at a fuller and more substantive conception of psychic splitting and of the psychic life of fragments which are the result of splitting. This is even more meaningful because there are some unacknowledged genealogical connections between Ferenczian concepts and Kleinian concepts, which I here explore. While with Klein we remain in the domain of "good" and "bad" objects-polarised objects which are constantly split and projected-with Ferenczi we are able to also give an account of complicated forms of imitation producing psychic fragments and with a "dark" side of identification, which he calls "identification with the aggressor". While attempting to take steps toward imagining a dialogue between Klein and Ferenczi, I note a certain silent "Ferenczian turn" in a late text by Melanie Klein, "On the Development of Mental Functioning", written in 1958. In particular, I reflect on her reference to some "terrifying figures" of the psyche, which cannot be accounted for simply as the persecutory parts of the super-ego but are instead more adequately read as more enigmatic and more primitive psychic fragments, resulting from processes of splitting.

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“…I argued that this superego is the result of the introjection not of an object or of an aspect of an object, but of a scene. It is a superegoas-a-scene (Soreanu, 2018a, p. 218;Soreanu, 2018b). This scene circulates in the psyche, incessantly replaying the violent encounter between an "over-great (fat) aggressor" and "a much smaller, weaker person, oppressed and dominated by the aggressor" (Ferenczi, 1930, p. 228).…”

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“…Raluca Soreanu (2018) structures her scholarly research on splitting as a dialogue between Klein and Ferenczi on their differing visions of the process of splitting. Whereas the former talks about splitting by the ego of the life and death instincts and their projection into external objects, the latter talks about splitting of the ego into different fragments as a result of environmental trauma, opening up the field for contemplation of the psychic life of fragments.…”