ABSTRACT
Developmental theory found its first prominent role within psychoanalytic theory. After Freud came to the revolutionary insight that real and fantasised experiences in childhood play a central role in the formation of neuroses, he attempted to reconstruct traumatising experiences through psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysic theory still postulates that the basic pattern of the personality is structured through early experiences and that these influence our experiencing of the world, other persons, and ourselves. The latency phase was long a "neglected child", since Freud was more interested in the turbulent periods of psychosexual development in the Oedipal phase and puberty. Analytic work with children in their first learning phase at school, however, reveals a time of rich and variegated development. Melanie Klein's visionary metapsychological concepts, positing a rudimentary core ego from birth on, enabled a new direction and further elaboration for Freud's developmental psychology, leading to valuable new distinctions.
