ABSTRACT
Melanie Klein has transformed psychoanalysis into the art of treating the disorders of thinking, says Julia Kristeva. By giving a central role in mental functioning to unconscious phantasies, she has made it impossible to approach unconscious mental life without the concept of symbolism. In her texts Melanie Klein refers to symbolism as the result of an equation, but in her clinical examples she takes into account both aspects of symbolism, that is, its representative function, and its expressive side. Melanie Klein took a quite different stand regarding Jones’s idea that only “what is repressed can be symbolized”, as she saw symbolism in every mental activity and thought that symbolisation was essential for sublimation. This chapter includes the two types of symbolism under the term mental representation although it maintains the distinction between these two symbolic forms and considers that the function of each of the constitutive aspects of representation has a different logical and psychological function.
