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In the 1958 paper On the Development of Mental Functioning, which serves as a sort of final «outline» of her thought, Melanie Klein sums up the innovative features of her contribution to metapsychology: «an attempt, she writes, to carry further Freud's fundamental theories on this subject in the light of conclusion derived from progress in psycho-analytic practice».16 «Although my conclusions are based on Freud's discovery of the instincts and their influence on the different parts of the mind, the additions I have suggested in this paper have involved a number of differences, upon which I would now make some concluding remarks […]. Freud's emphasis on the libido was much greater than that on aggression. […] He did not give sufficient weight to aggression in its impact on emotional life. Perhaps, therefore, he never fully worked out his discovery of the two instincts and seemed reluctant to extend it to the whole of mental functioning. If, however, Freud's conception of the two instincts is taken to its ultimate conclusion, the interaction of the life and death instincts will be seen to govern the whole of mental life».17
From this postulate derive the main divergences between her vision and Freud's: the conception of the first object relations and the functions of the Ego, the formation of the Super-ego, anxiety and the early defences, as expressions of psychic functioning in the face of «the all-pervading power of the life and death instincts»18, the conflict between which is the foundation of the whole psychic dynamic.