Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kröger: A Study of the Protagonist’s Emergence from the Schizoid to the Depressive Position

The protagonist of Thomas Manns novella Tonio Kröger is examined in terms of object-relational theory. This approach is briefly compared with the interpretation that might be offered by structural theorists. Kröger, the son of an authoritarian and prototypical Germanic father and an artistic and sensuous mother from the south, is tormented by what he sees as his dual heritage. Unable to accept that he can be both an artist and a respectable member of bourgeois society, he employs splitting as a primary defense mechanism both intrapsychically and interpersonally, projecting these opposing ideologies onto others including Hans, Inge, and Lisabetta. Alternately idealizing and demonizing these characters, projections of his internal conflict, he is unable to achieve an integrated sense of himself or others, functioning primarily in the schizoid position. His emergence from the schizoid into the more mature depressive position, having been foreshadowed in a series of dream sequences, occurs at the end of the work when he comes to accept the view that artistic impulses and bourgeois discipline are not incompatible.