Home > International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis > Reparation

Reparation is a form of sublimation connected, in the depressive position, with putting right damage done to good objects.

The pain of depressive anxiety (or guilt) starts as a deeply persecuting demand for a punishment—the talion law of an eye-for-an-eye and a tooth-for-a-tooth. As this position is worked through, new feelings (pining, Melanie Klein called it) appear towards the object, and are associated with specific impulses to repair the damage done by aggressive phantasies or acts. Development in the depressive position along this axis depends on the capacity to sustain a feeling of love towards the object despite the impulses of hating and, in phantasy, wanting to attack the good object. Love takes the form of a kind of penance or atonement to a loved one, creating a mixture of sadness, regret, and activity. This is reparation.

In the characteristic manic defenses the ego takes up a position in which the object is degraded, so that damage to it becomes a matter of indifference. At first reparation may be strongly colored by these defenses (manic reparation) and then reparation is not yet based on regret but is a demonstration of a strength and energy superior to that of the object.

The depressive position is founded primarily on the relations to the internal good object, and reparation is a means of securing it. Though reparation may often be directed to external objects, the latter represent the internal object to which the ego is dedicated.

Like sublimation, reparation is deeply dependent on the social context to provide useful directions for the effort to be channeled. Klein described reparation as a powerful impetus to creativity (1935). Aesthetic achievements are examples of the most touching and loving devotions to recreating the beauty of the loved object (Segal, 1991). Reparation without the sadness and regret betrays itself in a technical perfection of prettiness, distinct from beauty. Hanna Segal (1991) has greatly expanded the understanding of the Kleinian views on the aesthetic process based in reparation; and to some extent her descriptions of the aesthetic process compliment Donald Winnicott's theory of the aesthetic object (as transitional object). As a further addition to the psychoanalytic theory of aesthetics, Donald Meltzer has pointed to the place of the infant's primary "worship" of the breast, and of the parental creative couple, conflicted though that is.

Sublimation is a similar drive toward the use of libido in acceptable ways, though it is conceived in terms of the quantitative distribution of the libido while reparation is in terms of object-relations. Because it is an attempt to repair the effects of aggressiveness, reparation also links with undoing.

Reparation might be included within the term sublimation. However, reparation is not the result of desexualized and rechanneled libido. Instead it is the mobilization of the libidinal impulses in the context of a relationship with an object (especially an internal one) to contest the aggressive ones.

ROBERT D. HINSHELWOOD

See also: Cruelty; Depression; Depressive position; Gift; Melancholia; Schizophrenia; Splitting; Splitting of the object.