Reading the therapeutic contract in the Quran

Day #10

On reaching the #depressive #position

The depressive position is a concept introduced by Melanie Klein to reflect a psychic maturational process that reflects an infant s capacity to integrate its split experience of the primary carer as two separate part-objects: ideal and loved; persecuting and hated into one integrated object. While at the beginning, the main anxiety is narcissistic and concerned with the survival of the self, in the depressive position, anxiety is also felt on behalf of the object and capacity for concern for the other develops causing guilt and leading to reparation.

In the previous post, I reflected on the psychic meaning of Iblees’ position referring to the narcissistic position. This position belongs to the paranoid schizoid position in Kleinian terms, when one is still split about their internal objects.

Unlike Iblees who is not capable of expressing guilt, Adam does. Thus he works towards the depressive position.

2:37  Then Adam received some words from his Lord and He accepted his repentance: He is the Ever Relenting, the Most Merciful

In his experience of guilt and repentance, there is an acknowledgment of separateness, submission to God, and return to his mercy.

It is in this very act of separation and recognition that our subjectivity as human beings is born, a subjectivity rooted in the duality of the relationship with God, meaning the impossibility of merger. While Iblees fails to assimilate this reality, Adam does. This understanding leads Adam to become God’s subject, a vertical relation with the Devine is established and is the core of the depressive position from an islamic perspective.

In other words the story of creation is also the story of psychic development which can go either way, we are all prone to narcissistic tendencies as well as neurotic anxieties. The mitigating circumstances depend on our relational capacity to reconnect with the source of Goodness, God.

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