ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author devotes to Melanie Klein’s work before 1934, to show how it evolved from the classical Freudian theory, at what points it began to differ from it, and how the early ideas foreshadowed the later formulations. When Melanie Klein started analysing children in the 1920s she threw new light on the early development of the child. In Melanie Klein’s view the super-ego not only precedes the Oedipus complex but promotes its development. The anxiety produced by the internalized bad figures makes the child seek all the more desperately libidinal contact with his parents as external objects. Melanie Klein’s investigations into the early stages of the Oedipus complex led her to differ in certain important respects from Freud’s formulations about female sexuality and the importance of the phallic stage in particular. Melanie Klein gained access to the understanding of the child’s inner structure through following the transference and the symbolism of the child’s play.
