ABSTRACT
Melanie Klein sought to understand the experience of the baby and growing infant. She developed her concepts of the paranoid–schizoid and depressive positions to help describe the way the individual structure his mental world from the beginning of life. Klein’s work brought a dramatic shift of interest from neurosis to psychosis and a shift of emphasis away from A. Freud’s sexual explanations of motivations. D. W. Winnicott made profound contributions to the understanding of early object relations, and his work supported much of Klein’s. Freud’s theory of psychosis, based on a developmental view of mental life, attributed psychotic phenomena to a weakness of the libidinal tie to reality, the result of hereditary factors and of adverse experiences in childhood and puberty. W. R. Bion’s innovative work has made the origins and processes of psychosis more understandable for those who can comprehend his novel formulations and recognize their practical usefulness.
