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In 1952 I was asked to write a paper in honour of Melanie Klein's seventieth birthday. It is about a boy patient whose analysis was, during the first part, actually supervised by Melanie Klein, as part of my training in child analysis.
The first version of this paper was entitled ‘Aspects of Symbolism in Comprehension of the Not-self’, and published in 1952 in an issue of the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis devoted to papers written in honour of Melanie Klein.1 When these papers were reprinted in book form I used the title given above and shortened the paper.2 However I have now restored the omitted portion as it seemed to express an important aspect of what had been going on between this boy and me. (In later papers I referred to him as Simon.)
Much has been written by psychoanalysts on the process by which the infant's interest is transferred from an original primary object to a secondary one. The process is described as depending upon the identification of the primary object with another that is in reality different from it but emotionally is felt to be the same. Ernest Jones and Melanie Klein in particular, following up Freud's formulations, write about this transference of interest as being due to conflict with forces forbidding the interest in the original object, as well as the actual loss of the original object. Jones, in his paper ‘The Theory of Symbolism’ emphasizes the aspects of this prohibition which are to do with the forces that keep society together as a whole.3 Melanie Klein, in various papers, describes also the aspect of it which keeps