ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic thought emerging from the British School has contributed in significant ways to the elaboration of the concept of the dialectically constituted subject. Melanie Klein's attention was not focused on the theoretical question of the nature of subjectivity and as a result as interpreters of her work, may be a better position than Klein herself to understand the place of her thinking in the development of the psychoanalytic conception of the subject. The Kleinian subject exists not in any given position or hierarchical layering of positions. Associated with each of the positions is a particular quality of anxiety, forms of defense and object relatedness, a type of symbolization, and a quality of subjectivity. The psychoanalytic subject is therefore dialectically constituted within and outside of diachronic, consensually measured time. The Kleinian subject is decentered from itself in that none of the multiplicity of components of the ego and internal objects are coextensive with the subject.
