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For the purpose of this paper I have decided to concentrate on the early stages of the Oedipus complex which Melanie Klein has discovered in her analyses of young children. Her contributions naturally influence also the assessment of the later stages, but I think that the most useful way of approaching divergences of opinion lies in discussing the field in which they originate.
Although my presentation seems to emphasize the controversial points in our views on the Oedipus complex, this does not mean that we underrate the amount or the significance of the ground which we share.
Before dealing with my subject matter I wish to define our position with regard to some basic concepts and to outline briefly the period preceding the Oedipus complex.
All understanding of psychological phenomena rests on Freud's discovery of the dynamic Unconscious. The two primary instincts of life and death, the borderland entities between soma and psyche, from which all instinctual impulses are derived, are the source of mental energy; all mental processes start from an unconscious stage.
Freud's concept of an inherent antithesis in the deepest and the most dynamic levels of the mind is fully born out by Melanie Klein's work. More than this, her work has produced many observations which substantiate his theory, but precisely on this account major divergences between her views and classical theory have arisen.
I am referring to the position which the mental facet of the instinctual urges, which we call 'unconscious phantasy', occupies in Melanie Klein's work.
By the term unconscious phantasies we mean the most primitive psychic formations, inherent in the operation of the instinctual urges, and because these are inborn, we attribute unconscious phantasies to the infant from the beginning of his life. Unconscious phantasies occur not only in the infant, they are part of the unconscious mind at any time and form the matrix fr