ABSTRACT
Divergent concepts can usually be seen to arise in divergent contexts. Melanie Klein’s development of her notion of the object occurred from around 1920–1935. It is a very distinctive conception, and has quite radical implications, as it stresses the importance of the internal object as a defining factor in behaviour in the external world. “Insideness”, and the place where objects are, is important in Kleinian psychoanalysis, through to contemporary ideas about containment. Freud initially thought introjection was a failure to mourn, so that the object is internalised, as well as the relation to them. So an internal object is established to avoid accepting that the person has actually gone, and it continues an enduring relation with them inside. The upshot is that whereas Freud and classical psychoanalysts view one single internal object, Kleinians understand the inner world as a whole population, or “society”, of objects.
