The authors propose to distinguish the concept of instinct and its evolution in the works of Klein and of Freud. They point out that the notion of conflict as developed in The Interpretation of Dreams and in the metapsychological papers was totally ignored by Klein. In Freud's work, the idea of conflict evolved from the psychotherapy of hysteria to the structural model, but Klein focused exclusively on Freud's 1920 model of conflict between the life and death instincts. This model remained constant throughout her work. She reconceptualized the model of conflict in structural theory as a conflict between internal and external objects that have acquired the characteristics of structures. At birth, the instinctual fusion is altered, bringing about an increase in the death instinct which threatens the ego