The analysis of children's play has shown me that play has many functions. It expresses phantasies, wishes, and actual experiences in a symbolic way.
Psychologists
Melanie Klein
Austrian-British psychoanalyst (1882-1960) and a primary pioneer of child analysis. Born to a Jewish family in Vienna and analysed by Sándor Ferenczi after postpartum depression, she invented the play technique—using toys and drawing as symbolic equivalents of free association in child analysis—and became the principal founder of object relations theory after settling in London in 1926. Her concepts of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, projective identification, and the dynamics of primitive envy and gratitude reshaped twentieth-century psychoanalysis and remain central to contemporary clinical practice with severe personality disorders. Her bitter feud with Anna Freud during the 1941-1945 Controversial Discussions nearly destroyed the British Psychoanalytical Society and ended in a three-track training compromise that still defines the field.
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Melanie Klein's Other Quotes
Envy is the angry feeling that another person possesses and enjoys something desirable—the envious impulse being to take it away or to spoil it.
The feeling of gratitude arises from the full satisfaction of a good experience. Gratitude mitigates the feeling of envy because when we are grateful, we understand the value of what we possess rather than focusing on what others have.
Love and hatred are struggling together in the baby's mind; and this struggle to a certain extent persists throughout life and is liable to become a source of danger in human relationships.