Melanie Klein

1. I regard the id as identical with the two instincts (1958, 88).

2. I believe that [an early ego] exists from the beginning of post-natal life, though in a rudimentary form and largely lacking coherence (1957, 190). [In] the early ego […] a tendency towards integration alternates with a tendency towards disintegration, a falling into bits. I think that these fluctuations are characteristic of the first few months of life (1946, 100).

2.1 The ego is called into operation and developed by the life instinct. The way in which this is achieved is through its earliest object relations (1958, 89).

2.2 Under the impact of the struggle between the two instincts, one of the ego's main functions - the mastery of anxiety - is brought into operation from the very beginning of life. […] The danger of being destroyed by the death instinct thus gives rise to primordial anxiety in the ego (1958, 84-5).

2.3 It would be the ego, and not the organism, which deflects the death instinct. (1958, 84). Two processes are involved in that particular mechanism of deflection. Part of the death instinct is projected into the object, the object thereby becoming a persecutor; while that part of the death instinct which is retained in the ego causes aggression to be turned against that persecutory object (1958, 85, footnote 7).

2.4 The strength of the ego - reflecting the state of fusion between the two instincts - is […] constitutionally determined. […] To what extent the strength of the ego can be maintained and increased is in part affected by external factors, in particular the mother's attitude towards the infant. However even when the life

instinct and the capacity of love predominate, destructive impulses are still deflected outwards [… the processes of integration] lead to constant changes in the ego's relation to its objects with fluctuation between internal and external, good and bad ones, according to the infant's phantasies and emotions as well as under the