ABSTRACT
Melanie Klein’s genius was to have charted the desolate hinterland of psychosis; going beyond discrete conceptions of the life and death instinct she explores the soma/psychic territory of anxieties, persecution, splitting, loss, disintegration, and phantasy. Klein argues that there are two forms of anxiety that all children go through, namely, the fear of being devoured, of being poisoned, castrated, the fear of attacks on the “inside” of the body—these are persecutory anxiety; all anxieties regarding loved objects are grouped under depressive anxiety. Klein’s exploration of pre-Oedipal, pre-linguistic, object relations led her to prioritise notions of symbolisation and phantasy. She postulates symbolism as the foundation of all sublimation and talents because, she argues, it is by means of symbolic equation that things, activities and interests become the subject of libidinal phantasies. Klein provides clear statements regarding the necessary pathology of homosexuality. Klein’s position on language also matters in psychoanalytic practice.
