The Importance of Symbol-Formation in the Development of the Ego

A paper Melanie Klein read at the Oxford Congress of 1929 and published in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis in 1930. Klein argues that anxiety is what drives symbol formation: the child's sadistic phantasies against the mother's body make the objects of that body feared, so the child's interest shifts to new objects that come to stand for them, and in this way the child's world grows wider. She illustrates the argument with the analysis of "Dick", a four-year-old boy whose excessive early defence against his own sadism had all but stopped symbol formation and, with it, his relation to reality.