ABSTRACT
Many feminists have been impressed by Melanie Klein's emphasis on the centrality of the mother in the infant's early development. It has signified a move from Sigmund Freud's phallocentrism, and the language of instincts and their satisfaction. For Klein, the baby's unconscious phantasies in relation to the breast initiate and underpin her relationship to others. Klein stresses the importance in every analysis of considering the internal processes in relation to constitutional and relational factors – that is to say, 'external' factors. Klein maintains that the girl's wish to possess her father's penis, stolen from the hated mother, is a fundamental factor in female sexual development. She assumes that the girl wants a penis as an object of oral satisfaction rather than as an attribute of masculinity, as Freud had proposed.
