ABSTRACT
Melanie Klein was a pupil and a follower of S. Freud. Through her work, at first mainly with children, she extended the area of knowledge and understanding opened up by Freud and she came to some new formulations which in certain ways developed Freud's ideas, and in others differed from his. By 1919, when she started her work, psychoanalytical theory had undergone a considerable evolution and Freud's theory of the psychic development was in some respects complete. In sorting out the history of the component instincts, Freud established that they originate at different periods of the child's life. Melanie Klein started her work just before 1920, when psychoanalysis was at one of its turning points and Freud's new ideas were giving a stimulus to new approaches. Prominent among the psychoanalysts who augmented in important ways the body of psychoanalytic knowledge was Karl Abraham, who became a major influence on Melanie Klein.
