ABSTRACT
Parents often talk about their young children's excessive demands for toys and materials. The child phantasizes that the mother has an internal goodness that she is keeping for herself, or sharing with the father and others. She or he feels deprived of this goodness, and anxiety arises due to the phantasy that he or she will not be given enough to counter the badness within. Children project their own greed onto the child who is being greedy, and then, in order to cope with their own feelings of dissatisfaction at not having enough, they leave. Some parents seem to need to give their children large numbers of dolls, cars, games or other toys. Some children have large collections of toys or many friends as a way of coping with their greed. The child has gradually built up an internal representation of the objects he or she has obtained through the relationship with his or her mother.
