> Does Kleninian psychoanalysis say that individuals _choose_ to have
> "weaker and less integrated egos" and therefore become clinically
> depressed? If so, I wouldn't recommend it to the clinically depressed
> seeking treatments.
No. Its a developmental failure resulting from some combination of constitutional and environmental "causes." The meaning of "cause" in this context allows for the sort of causes I pointed to before. In particular, the most important environmental cause is the inability of the "subjects" in the developing individual's environment to perceive truly and, on this basis, provide understanding and "containing." As therapy, it attempts to create a relationship of this kind. The whole point is to increase the capacity for rational self-determination. This is also why, when it's competently done, it's never moralistic and it never gives advice.
There are good reasons, by the way, to expect that competent psychoanalysis will be hard to come by. Training analyses must of necessity be inadequate and the inadequacies tend to snowball as inadequately analyzed analysts themselves become training analysts. This is as true of "Kleinian" psychoanalysis as of any other kind. It explains cases of "psychoanalysts" such as Masud Kahn (<http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n04/godl01_.html> <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n05/kerm01_.html>} and the fragmentation of the field into classical Freudians, Kleinians, Lacanians, self-psychologists, etc. etc.
> At 20, John Stuart Mill, the foremost philosopher of individual
> liberty, also suffered from a breakdown:
> <http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Mill.html>.
"during the later returns of my dejection, the doctrine of what is called Philosophical Necessity weighed on my existence like an incubus. I felt as if I was scientifically proved to be the helpless slave of antecedent circumstances; as if my character and that of all others had been formed for us by agencies beyond our control, and was wholly out of our own power. I often said to myself, what a relief it would be if I could disbelieve the doctrine of the formation of character by circumstances; and remembering the wish of Fox respecting the doctrine of resistance to governments, that it might never be forgotten by kings, nor remembered by subjects, I said that it would be a blessing if the doctrine of necessity could be believed by all quoad the characters of others, and disbelieved in regard to their own. I pondered painfully on the subject, till gradually I saw light through it. I perceived, that the word Necessity, as a name for the doctrine of Cause and Effect applied to human action, carried with it a misleading association; and that this association was the operative force in the depressing and paralysing influence which I had experienced: I saw that though our character is formed by circumstances, our own desires can do much to shape those circumstances; and that what is really inspiriting and ennobling in the doctrine of free-will, is the conviction that we have real power over the formation of our own character; that our will, by influencing some of our circumstances, can modify our future habits or capabilities of willing. All this was entirely consistent with the doctrine of circumstances, or rather, was that doctrine itself, properly understood. From that time I drew in my own mind, a clear distinction between the doctrine of circumstances, and Fatalism; discarding altogether the misleading word Necessity. The theory, which I now for the first time rightly apprehended, ceased altogether to be discouraging, and besides the relief to my spirits, I no longer suffered under the burthen, so heavy to one who aims at being a reformer in opinions, of thinking one doctrine true, and the contrary doctrine morally beneficial. The train of thought which had extricated me from this dilemma, seemed to me, in after years, fitted to render a similar service to others; and it now forms the chapter on Liberty and Necessity in the concluding Book of my System of Logic." <http://www.bartleby.com/25/1/5.html#2>
The particular version of social constructionism that Mill adopted derived from Hume and Bentham's associationism and utilitarianism, i.e. from doctrines that fragment experience into externally related bits.
Ted