ABSTRACT

In spite of Klein’s working within the drive model and her interest in the role of sexuality in early development, for her followers sexuality shifted toward aggression and more archaic mechanisms. As reflected in the two volumes of Melanie Klein Today (Bott-Spillius,1988), the major Kleinian contribution was in the area of psychosis and projective identification. Klein’s schizoid-paranoid position introduced psychotic elements such as fragmentation, part-objects, catastrophic annihilation and persecution anxieties into the understanding of normal and pathological functioning and experience. Within this position hysteria was conceived as one of many modes of defense against psychotic anxieties (Laplanche, 1974).