ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some of the differences between the notion of "phantasy" as held by Melanie Klein and those abiding by her theoretical models, and the notion as held by what are sometimes called "the more orthodox psychoanalytic thinkers". It focuses on some arguments made against the Klein/Susan Isaacs view of early object relations, and of early opposing introjective and projective phantasies seen as the elements of intense early anxiety and conflict, which soon involve guilty feelings and remorse over destructive phantasy-impulses felt towards what is becoming recognised as the enormously loved mother. One justification for retrospectively inferring babyhood phantasies from material of early childhood was that Freud had analogously inferred childhood phantasy from the material of adult analyses. So, differences over seeing phantasy as "the mental representative of instinct" and as "based on Freud's primary introjection" were argued from the point of view of evidence. Opposing interpretations of observed or inferred evidence seemed only to confirm the opposing views.
