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I wish to point out, therefore, that from the beginning of life, on Freud's own hypothesis, the psyche responds to the reality of its experience by interpreting them—or, rather, by misinterpreting them—in a subjective manner that increases it pleasure and preserves it from pain. This act of a subjective interpretation of experience, which it carries out by means of the process of introjection and projection, is called by Freud hallucination; and it forms the basis of what we mean by phantasy-life.
I have always insisted on the necessity of postulating the primary reality function of the primitive ego. Indeed, without such a postulate, there is nothing to prevent us falling into a primitive variety of mysticism.
In 1941 the British Psychoanalytic Society entered into what has become known as the Controversial Discussions. These were an institutional response to a schism within the Society that began after Klein presented her paper introducing the depressive position