ABSTRACT
Melanie Klein does not make much of what the infant or mother contributes, but takes the amalgam as a nucleus of the ego. What gives Melanie Klein’s work its special power is not simply that the ego defends itself against annihilation anxiety but that it does so with whatever sense of goodness it can muster. S. Freud early notes that the mother regulates distressful affects of the infant. The mother comforts, soothes, cares for, and feeds the infant and makes the bad feelings go away. Melanie Klein takes a gratifying or ideal feed as the privileged paradigm of making the infant feel good. She mentions, in passing, that the mother’s love and understanding are important to the infant in going through disintegration and psychotic anxieties. All sorts of combinations of projective-introjective fantasy involving good-bad ego/affect/object are possible. Optimally, fantasy regulates the balance of good and bad feeling: pumping out the bad pumping in the good.
