ABSTRACT
It is well known that Melanie Klein postulated an origin for the superego that contrasted with Freud’s structural model. Whereas Freud in 1923 regarded the superego as the ‘heir’ to the Oedipus complex, Klein at exactly this time was starting to analyse young children and found they experienced internal inhibitory functions resembling exactly the superego at a developmental stage rather before the one Freud had postulated. In this chapter I shall attempt to describe how Klein’s observations and the later evolution of her theories has given a very different functioning to the subjective experience of conscience, morality, punishment and reparation and forgiveness. The argument is that the approach from the Kleinian positions, paranoid-schizoid, and depressive, avoids some of the criticisms of the classical superego.
