ABSTRACT
The forms of egocentric thinking characteristic of children—accompanied by fantasies of omnipotence and magical thinking—lose some of their importance during latency; so does the small child's mental occupation with her and her parents' body functions. Sigmund Freud examined thought processes in the unconscious and conscious areas of the psychic apparatus, thus radically extending understanding. The crucial characteristic of Freud's revolutionary view on the psyche is how he extended understanding of consciousness through the unconscious dimension. One could say that Melanie Klein supplemented Freud's vertical structures of conscious, preconscious, and unconscious levels with a horizontal level—the relationship to an object, that is, to another person—which is why this direction in psychoanalysis is also called "object relations theory". Klein also extends understanding of the learning process, by emphasising the relationship between two emotionally linked persons.
