ABSTRACT
As thinking emerges, Bion described the relationship between mother and baby in terms of the function of "container" and "contained". It is impossible to examine here in full detail the various stages in the development of thinking, especially since our primary aim is to show how affective processes are related to thinking, memory, fantasy, and the development of personality. Hanna Segal calls the primitive form of symbolization "symbolic equation", since this is linked with concrete thinking. Melanie Klein understood children's play as a symbolic expression of unconscious conflicts and was thus able to explore the early development of the inner world in infancy. Mature thinking is characterized by the knowledge of the difference between self and object, and that between internal reality and external reality, an accepting of the reality principle and causality, and having the ability to symbolize.
