WOMEN AND PSYCHOLOGY

WOMEN AND PSYCHOLOGY


Inhibition of self- expression is an old wife’s tale in the modern era. Monopoly of abilities and capabilities is altered and a healthy environment where all, irrespective of their class, gender is leading to a collective progress. Life becomes more comprehensive and lasting having women playing their vital role. Being the magnificent creation of God, women possess a multi facet personality with compassion, benevolence, adjustability and integrity.
Women constituting half the population of the world is no less than men in accomplishing their goals and in setting standards. Efforts of people go futile in abstaining women from striving for more. Over-coming the obstacles and non drifting passion has led her not to swerve her aim. Having contributed to almost all the spheres, to the field of psychology in particular, is tremendous. Their theories and thoughts is the voice of womanhood. Their role in social transformation is immense. The contributions of women psychologists have often been overlooked throughout psychology's history. I take this pride opportunity in shedding light on the five eminent women psychologists who stand out in their contribution.



Anne Anastasi

Anne Anastasi (December 19, 1908 – May 4, 2001) was an American psychologist best known for her pioneering development of psychometrics. Her seminal work, Psychological Testing, remains a classic text in which she drew attention to the individual being tested and therefore to the responsibilities of the testers. She called for them to go beyond test scores, to search the assessed individuals’ history to help them to better understand their own results and themselves. She made major conceptual contributions to the understanding of the manner in which psychological development is influenced by environmental and experiential factors. Her writings have provided incisive commentary on test construction and the proper application of psychological tests
Known as the “test guru,” Anastasi focused on what she believed to be the appropriate use of psychometric tests.. According to Anastasi, such tests only revealed what the test-taker knows at the time; they did not explain test scores. In addition, any psychometric measurement must take into account that aptitude is context-dependent. Anastasi stressed the importance of the role of the tester to correctly select, conduct, and evaluate tests.
She was president of the American Psychological Foundation (1965–1967) and was the first female president of the American Psychological Association (1972). In 1987, she was awarded the National Medal of Science.
Anne Anastasi (1908–2001) became synonymous with psychometrics—the measurement of human characteristics—by the 1950s. Anastasi remained the key influence for anyone who had ever administered or taken an achievement, intelligence, aptitude, personality, or creativity test. Even at the time of her death in 2001, Anastasi's 1954 textbook, Psychological Testing, remained the standard for students and professionals alike doing research in the design and analysis of psychological tests.
What made Anastasi unique among her contemporary research and professional community members was her keen interest that went beyond test results. She found a way to seek the underlying cause of behaviors, and to explain statistics in the simplest way possible. This gave her students a grasp of the complex principles that could prove an obstacle to understanding the crucial essence of evaluations. Anastasi's approach was that of a generalist who paid attention not only to a psychological test's results, but how results might be interpreted in regard to the influences of a person's life history, intelligence, and other variables. When evaluating hospitalized psychiatric patients, for instance, Anastasi looked to the content of their drawings as well as the statistics that might have been gleaned from her testing. The psychometric measures that emerged meant little to Anastasi without looking at their psychological content, their relationship to other psychometric tests in consideration of other areas of psychology, and the social context of the testing.
Anastasi was revolutionary for her time. In 1937 when she published her first book, Differential Psychology, Individual and Group Differences in Behavior, what she offered the professional psychological community as well as the individual student cut through the complexity of the work that had already been done—work that was virtually incomprehensible to the average layperson. Her approach was presented as just one way of understanding behavior and was not intended to outline an entirely separate field of psychology. Her first paragraph noted that with differential psychology, it was "apparent that if we can explain satisfactorily why individuals react differently from each other, we shall understand why each individual reacts as [he] does."
Anastasi found her way through the line of earlier experimental psychologists such as Charles Edward Spearman and Wilhelm Wundt. She established her own place in that tradition by expanding on the knowledge of early researchers in order to help her shape human study within the context of a broader human history. Her research and experimentation gave her the message that people were not mechanisms reacting, or not reacting, to certain stimulus. She understood that each individual was a product of a combination of factors that included genetic, hereditary, and environmental influences. These created an equally unique profile to be considered when creating or interpreting psychological tests.
Anastasi's work has remained especially relevant to modern questions in education and psychological evaluations because of the intensity with which she penetrated the issue of cultural bias, or fairness in testing. Anastasi seriously questioned whether or not tests could be created without cultural bias. During the 1960s and 1970s, others argued that a test could be created that was totally fair to all individuals, crossing cultural lines. She insisted that no such test could be produced.
Anastasi consequently became renowned for her work with the interaction between biology and environment. She was a critical participant in the "nature versus nurture" arguments that significantly occupied the psychological scene of the later twentieth century. Because of her work in applied psychology, such fields as industrial and consumer psychology were given a boost in prestige at a time when few academic or theoretical psychologists dealt with the practical issues of human interaction.
In her long and productive career, Anne Anastasi has produced not only several classic texts in psychology but has been a major factor in the development of psychology as a quantitative behavioral science. To psychology professionals, the name Anastasi is synonymous with psychometrics, since it was she who pioneered understanding how psychological traits are influenced, developed, and measured. In 1987 she was rated by her peers as the most prominent living woman in psychology in the English-speaking world.

















Anna Freud

Anna Freud , the founder of child psychoanalysis, was Born on December 3, 1895 in Vienna, Austria, began her career under father's wing. She grew up in the household of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychology. Under his wing she grew a deep attachment and a love for him and the field of psychoanalysis. Many would say that she was "her father's daughter," however she was more independent than many would give her credit for. Most of her life was dedicated to her father and his work, where he left off she picked up and made it her own. Many would go so far as to say that she had no originality of her own. This is untrue. After her father's death her career flourished. She published several books of her own, strictly adhering the rules her father had set, but going expanding where he did not have the opportunity. She is most noted for her work with children and the concept of children undergoing analysis. In addition, she was a school teacher, added to the knowledge of ego psychology and maintained The Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic. There isn't a day that she was not busy delving into something new or revising something that was old. After she finished one project she was off into another one almost immediately. All the time she was dedicated to her father's psychology and never strayed from the belief that his thoughts were concrete and accurate. Her life spans most of the twentieth century, where she saw the world and society change. She went wherever her teachings took her and never stopped defining child psychoanalysis. Some may say she was always in her father's shadow and was "the girl behind Freud.

The youngest of Sigmund Freud's six children, Anna was extraordinarily close to her father. Anna was not close to her mother and was said to have tense relationships with her five siblings. She attended a private school, but later said she learned little at school. The majority of her education was from the teachings of her father's friends and associates.

Anna Freud created the field of child psychoanalysis and her work contributed greatly to our understanding of child psychology. She also developed different techniques to treat children. She noted that children’s symptoms differed from those of adults and were often related to developmental stages. She also provided clear explanations of the ego's defence mechanisms in her book The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (1936).
While she was heavily influenced by her father's work, she was far from living in his shadow. Her own work expanded upon her father's ideas, but also created the field of child psychoanalysis.

Although Anna Freud never earned a higher degree, her work in psychoanalysis and child psychology contributed to her eminence in the field of psychology. She began her children's psychoanalytic practice in 1923 in Vienna, Austria and later served as chair of the Vienna Psycho-Analytic Society.
In 1938, Anna was interrogated by the Gestapo and then fled to London along with her father. In 1941, she formed the Hampstead Nursery with Dorothy Burlington. The nursery served as a psychoanalytic program and home for homeless children.

Her experiences at the nursery provided the inspiration for three books, Young Children in Wartime (1942), Infants Without Families (1943), and War and Children (1943). After the Hampstead Nursery closed in 1945, Freud created the Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic and served as director from 1952 until her death in 1982.
As Anna began analyzing more and more children, it became apparent that her analysis of children differed from her father's analysis of adults. This very much pleased him. She used different techniques with the children and refuted her father's Little Hans analysis. Her father stated that "symptoms give us our bearings when we make our diagnosis." But children's symptoms, Anna noted, are not the same as those of adults. They are related to particular developmental stages, and they are often transitory in subject. At the time her practice was growing, she was starting to notice things within herself that she needed to work on if she were to be an effective counsellor. She had an "unreasonable need for praise and admiration." She wanted her father to view her differently than the women he often encountered in analysis.
From 1934-1936 she spent most of her spare time writing On Defence Mechanisms. This is where her child psychoanalysis progressed to adolescence. The book had three purposes. The first was to generally review the technical and theoretical developments that had taught analysts how to give equal consideration clinically to the id, ego and superego. Secondly, to review the mechanisms her father had isolated and described and elaborate on them and summarize them. Lastly, to incorporate her experience thus far with defence mechanisms. She finished the book in time to present to her father on his eightieth birthday, of which he was extremely pleased
Anna Freud who is best known as the Founder of child psychoanalysis, Contributions to ego psychology, Defense mechanisms, was influenced by her father's psychoanalytic theories, but her own contributions to ego psychology and child psychoanalysis made her an important theorist in her own right.




KAREN HORNEY


"All the drives for glory have in common the reaching out for greater knowledge, wisdom, virtue, or powers than are given to human beings; they all aim at the absolute, the unlimited, the infinite. Nothing short of absolute fearlessness, mastery, or saintliness has any appeal for the neurotic obsessed with the drive for glory. He is therefore the antithesis of the truly religious man. For the latter, only to God are all things possible: the neurotic's version is: nothing is impossible to me. His will power should have magic proportions, his reasoning be infallible, his foresight flawless, his knowledge all encompassing. The theme of the devil's pact . . . begins to emerge. The neurotic is the Faust who is not satisfied with knowing a great deal, but has to know everything."
--Karen Horney,

Karen Horney made significant contributions to humanism, self-psychology, psychoanalysis, and feminine psychology. Her refutation of Freud's theories about women generated more interest in the psychology of women. Horney also believed that people were able to act as their own therapists, emphasizing the personal role each person has in their own mental health and encouraging self-analysis and self-help. Karen Horney was a pioneering theorist in personality, psychoanalysis, and "feminine psychology"

Karen Horney born Danielsen (16 September 1885 – 4 December 1952) was a German psychoanalyst and psychiatrist of Norwegian and Dutch descent. Her theories questioned some traditional Freudian views, particularly his theory of sexuality, as well as the instinct orientation of psychoanalysis and its genetic psychology.
Horney's theory is perhaps the best theory of neurosis we have. First, she offered a different way of viewing neurosis. She saw it more much more continuous with normal life than previous theorists. Specifically, she saw neurosis as an attempt to make life bearable, as a way of "interpersonal control and coping." This is, of course, what we all strive to do on a day-to-day basis, only most of us seem to be doing alright, while the neurotic seems to be sinking fast.
It is true that some people who are abused or neglected as children suffer from neuroses as adults. What we often forget is that most do not. If you have a violent father, or a schizophrenic mother, or are sexually molested by a strange uncle, you may nevertheless have other family members that love you, take care of you, and work to protect you from further injury, and you will grow up to be a healthy, happy adult. It is even more true that the great majority of adult neurotics did not in fact suffer from childhood neglect or abuse! So the question becomes, if it is not neglect or abuse that causes neurosis, what does?
Horney's answer, which she called the "basic evil," is parental indifference, a lack of warmth and affection in childhood. Even occasional beatings or an early sexual experience can be overcome, if the child feels wanted and loved.
Theory of Neurotic Needs
While debatable, many agree that Horney's theory of neurosis is the best that exists today. She looked at neurosis in a different light, saying that it was much more continuous with normal life than other theorists believed. Furthermore, she saw neurosis as an attempt to make life bearable, as an interpersonal controlling and coping technique.
Horney thought it a mistake to think that neuroses in adults are caused by abuse or neglect in one's childhood. She, instead, named parental indifference the true culprit behind neurosis. The key to understanding this phenomenon is the child's perception, rather than the parent's intentions, she said. A child may feel a lack of warmth and affection if a parent, who is otherwise occupied or neurotic themselves, makes fun of their child's thinking or neglects to fulfill promises, for example.
Using her clinical experience, Horney named ten particular patterns of neurotic needs. They are based on things that all humans need, but that are distorted in some because of difficulties within their lives. As she investigated them further, she found that she could clump the ten into three broad coping strategies.
The first strategy is compliance, also known as the moving-toward strategy or the self- effacing solution. Most children facing parental indifference use this strategy. They often have a fear of helplessness and abandonment, or what Horney referred to as basic anxiety. This strategy includes the first three needs: the need for affection and approval, which is the indiscriminate need to both please others and be liked by them; the neurotic need for a partner, for someone else to take over one's life, encompassing the idea that love will solve all of one's problems; and the neurotic need to restrict one's life into narrow boarders, including being undemanding, satisfied with little, inconspicuous.
Horney's second broad coping strategy is aggression, also called the moving-against and the expansive solution. Here, children's first reaction to parental indifference is anger, or basic hostility. Needs four through eight fall under this category. The fourth need is for power, for control over others, and for a facade of omnipotence. Fifth is the neurotic need to exploit others and to get the better of them. Another need is for social recognition and prestige, with the need for personal admiration falling along the same lines. The eighth neurotic need is for personal achievement.
The final coping strategy is withdrawal, often labelled the moving-away-from or resigning solution. When neither aggression nor compliance eliminates the parental indifference, Horney recognized that children attempt to solve the problem by becoming self- sufficient. This includes the neurotic needs for self sufficiency and independence and those for perfection and unassailability.
While it is human for everyone to have these needs to some extent, the neurotic's need is much more intense, Horney explained. He or she will experience great anxiety if the need is not met or if it appears that the need will not be met in the future. The neurotic, therefore, makes the need to central to their existence. Horney's ideas of neurotic needs mirrored those of Adler in many ways. Together, Adler and Horney make up an unofficial school of psychiatry and they are often referred to as neo-Freudians or Social Psychologists.
Feminine Psychology
As the first woman to present a paper on feminine psychology at an international meeting, Karen Horney pioneered and developed a feminine psychology that provided a new way of thinking about women. It has been said that the fourteen papers that she wrote between 1922 and 1937, which she compiled to form a volume titled "Feminine Psychology", could, by themselves, have earned Horney an important place in the history of psychology. She had a feeling that, as a woman, it was her task to work out a fuller understanding for specifically female trends and attitudes in life. In her "The Problem of Feminine Masochism", Horney proved that culture and society encouraged women to be dependent on men for love, prestige, wealth, care, and protection. She pointed out the overemphasis on pleasing men and the overvaluation of men and love. Women, she found, were to be beautiful and charming, according to society. Also, women gained value only through their husband’s children, and family. Her "The Distrust between the Sexes" compared the husband-wife relationship to a parent-child relationship. In "The Problem of the Monogamous Ideal", Karen focused on marriage, and six of her other papers were based on marriage problems. Finally, her "Maternal Conflicts", shed new light on the problems associated with raising adolescents.
Horney further benefited women with her ideas of self-analysis. She referred to these notions to write one of the first "self-help" books. Those with relatively minor neurotic problems, she said, could be their own psychiatrists. She stressed that self-awareness was a part of becoming a better, stronger, richer human being.
Horney believed that the self is the core of one's being, their potential. If one has an accurate conception of themselves, they are free to realize their potential. The healthy person's real self is aimed at reaching their self-actualization throughout life.
Karen Horney was undoubtedly a great influence to numerous self-psychologists, humanists, cognitive therapists, psychoanalysts, feminists, and existentialists. As a theorist, leader, teacher, and therapist, Horney made numerous contributions that have been highly significant in shaping and advancing psychological thought. The Karen Horney Clinic is a research, training, and low-cost treatment center. The institution was opened on May 6, 1955 in honor of the woman's important achievements. Karen practiced, taught, and wrote up until her death in 1952.
Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.
--Karen Horney


Mary Whiton Calkins

As psychology was developing into a science unto itself in the later part of the 1890s, universities were being established all over the world at an astronomical pace. Although the subject of psychology was taught in several different forms, the curriculum was not available to women and minorities at the graduate level. In fact, one of the predominant theories of the period was that women were intellectually inferior to men and higher forms of learning could prove hazardous to the health for a delicate female. During this period a few exceptionally intelligent and determined individuals did manage to make a name for themselves in spite of the odds they faced. Mary Whiton Calkins is one such individual. In a time when women were not only thought to be inferior, but were barred from most institutions of higher education, Mary Whiton Calkins.
The eldest of five children, Mary Whiton Clakins, was born on March 30, 1863 in Hartford Connecticut . Calkins was a pioneer in psychology. She was responsible for the creation of a method of memorization called the right associates method. She founded the psychology department at Wellesley College. She was the first female president of both the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1905, and the American Philosophical Association in 1918. She developed and advocated a self-based psychology, even as behavioural psychology began to dominate the field.

Mary Whiton Calkins' most prominent theoretical perspective was the concept of self-psychology. Calkins defines self-psychology as the study of conscious persons or selves. This concept is a result of the influence of William James who asserted in Principles of Psychology that "introspective observation is what we have to rely on first and foremost and always" for the observation of the self. The basal forms of this concept are the subject, the object, and the relation between the object and subject. Calkins contended that all consciousness is personal, and further, it was impossible to define the "self" because these qualities or associations are always in flux and unique to every individual. Calkins distinguished self-psychology from other forms of psychology such as psychological atomism because they did not include a conscious self component Mary Whiton Calkins, like James, believed that the individual's constant scrutiny of the self through perception and association was the main function of the mind. This was not merely an intellectual conviction, but a moral and spiritual conviction as well. Mary's theories of self-psychology were not well accepted in the academic atmosphere of her time, yet she continued to champion these theories because of her strong moral views about human interconnection. She was a strong opposer of the sexist belief that women were intellectually inferior to men and expressed those views many times throughout her career.
Although Mary Whiton Calkins was never officially recognized by Harvard University officials for her doctorate work, she made important contributions during her experiments on association and memory. Calkins conducted several experiments using variations of numbers and colours in which she investigated the effects of frequency, primacy, and vividness on associative memory. She concluded from her research that frequency was by far the most important factor in effective memory association. These techniques are now referred to as the paired-associate techniques. In 1891Calkins established a psychology laboratory at Wellesley while she was instructing a psychology course in the Philosophy Department. Following in the footsteps of one of her primary mentors, William James, Calkins turned to philosophy again in the latter part of her career becoming an Associate Professor of Psychology and Philosophy at Wellesley in 1895. Calkins published many of her papers from her work on association in Munsterberg's lab during this period and her first book, An Introduction to Psychology, was published in 1901.
Mary Whiton Calkins’ contributions to psychology centred on a field called self psychology. The field of self psychology is focused on issues of defining the self and memory; however, Calkins finally concluded that the self was indefinable. It was Calkins’ belief that psychology is focused on studying the conscious self. Therefore, she focused her hundreds of papers on self psychology; that is, the study of the conscious self.
Her writings were multi-dimensional, often crossing over into philosophy. In addition to her work studying self psychology, Calkins is recognized as a philosopher. She published many papers as well as several books, such as “The Persistent Problems of Philosophy” and “The Good Man and The Good.”
At the time of her death from cancer in 1929, Calkins had earned the title of Research Professor at Smith College.
In a time when women were thought to be mentally inferior to men, Mary Whiton Calkins proved that this sexist conception was far from the truth. Because of her father's intense devotion to the proper education of his children, Mary was educated far beyond the standard of the time, thus proving that if given the opportunity women can achieve equal academic levels to men.
Despite having been denied her PhD from Harvard, Calkins' professional and scholarly achievements led to several honours such as being ranked 12th on a list of the 50 leading psychologists in 1903, a Doctor of Letters degree from Columbia University in 1909, and a Doctor of Laws degree from Smith College in 1910. Mary Whiton Calkins was elected the first female president of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1905 and in 1918 was elected as the first female president of the American Philosophical Association.
It has been said that a woman has to work twice as hard to progress half as far as a man in modern society. In the time of Mary Whiton Calkins a woman had to work three times as hard, be twice as smart, and more brave and outspoken than any other woman around her. Mary did far more for the world than just contribute to the fields of philosophy and psychology, she paved the way for future female students, who will continue to disprove the old theories of the intellectual inferiority of women.
Among her major contributions to psychology are the invention of the paired associate's technique and her work in self-psychology. Calkins believed that the conscious self was the primary focus of psychology. Despite Mary Whiton Calkins contributions, Harvard maintains its refusal to grant the degree she earned and her influence on psychology is often overlooked by both scholars and students.
























Melanie Klein

"It is an essential part of the interpretive work that it should keep in step with fluctuations between love and hatred, between happiness and satisfaction on the one hand and persecutory anxiety and depression on the other."
Melanie Klein (30 March 1882 – 22 September 1960) was an Austrian-born British psychoanalyst who devised novel therapeutic techniques for children that had a significant impact on child psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis. She was a leading innovator in theorizing object relations theory.
Melanie Klein, elaborating and developing Sigmund Freud's theory in Mourning and Melancholy where he develops his conception of the relationship between dreaming and art, finds a direct connection between what she classifies as the depressive position and the artist's ability to form symbols. Symbolization is the basis of all those skills by which we relate to the world around us. Psychological understanding of the process of symbolization is integral to our understanding of the process of creativity and representation. According to Kleinian psychology our memories tell us that in childhood an illusion of a state of union exists between the child and his/her outside world. When consciousness develops in the individual a sense of the past also develops, and with it a concomitant sense of loss. In our attempt to reintegrate our sense of self with the outside world, we develop a process of substitution for the sense of loss. We can no longer relive the past, other than in memory, which itself is triggered by an association with something which symbolizes what is lost. In psychological terms a symbol "fuses" with the lost object or even the lost sense of one's self, making up what we might refer to as a shadow of oneself. As we encounter new unfamiliar objects, in our attempt to find the familiar in the unfamiliar we experience a momentary lapse in our sense of the boundaries of self. And so, just as quickly we name those familiar objects, we paint them or develop symbols for them to "understand them" we incorporate them into our own sphere, our own new expanded sense of self. Language or words become symbols for people (objects) out there. Our thirst for knowledge, our urge to know is influenced by the Oedipal situation as described by Klein. We create for ourselves our own internal sense of a fantasy world, a theatre within as it were.
Object Relations Theory emerges wholly from the profound impact of the work of Melanie Klein. Klein sought to elaborate on and extend Freud's original theory through her observations and clinical work with children. Indeed, Klein's work was a transformation of Freud's original insights through her unique interpretive perspectives. Klein used play therapy and used interpretive techniques which were very similar to the techniques used with adults.
Working with children, Klein felt she had observed processes in pre-Oedipal children that were very similar to Oedipal conflicts in older children. Throughout her career, she attempted to theoretically justify these observations. In turn, Klein and her followers applied her practice and theory to work with psychotic adult patients. Klein generally saw similarities between young children's coping strategies in play and psychotic symptoms. In general, however, Klein imagined that all adults retain, at some level, such psychotic processes, involving a constant struggle to cope with paranoid anxiety and depressive anxiety. Klein was led, therefore, to apply her approach to adult neurotics, as well as psychotics and children. Klein's technique, in all cases, involved a method of using "deep" interpretations which she felt communicated directly to the unconscious of the client, thus by-passing ego defences.
From Klein's psychoanalytical studies, she developed the 'play therapy' technique - the first important therapeutic innovation designed to suit psychoanalytic methods to young children. In play therapy, Klein believed that the children's unconscious motivation is uncovered as they project their feelings through the use of play and drawings. For example, the way they play toys reveal earlier infantile fantasies and anxieties. Children could be understood through their non-verbal behaviour.
Klein also wrote about the use of projective identification. In projective identification it was not the impulse only, but parts of the self and bodily products that were in fantasy projected into the object . When pain came, she said, one would put the pain on someone else. Then the other was the persecutor. The aims of projective identification could be manifold: getting rid of an unwanted part of oneself, a greedy possession and scooping out of the object, control of the object, and so on. One of the results was identification of the object with the projected part of the self.
A more evolved state was Klein's Depressive Position. According to Klein, one would realize that the mother that one hated was also the mother that one loved. The depressive position took place when one took in the mother as a whole object. One would inhibit the need to attack, and contain the feeling into oneself. This led to taking in and tolerating more pain. Klein's theory was also linked to ambivalence; one could love and hate the mother or any person and still have a relationship.
According to Klein, both artistic creativity and bodily pleasures were arenas in which the central human struggle between love, hate, and compensation was played out. Men and women were seen as deeply concerned about the balance between their own ability to love and hate, about their capacity to keep their objects alive, both their relationships to others as real objects and their internal objects, their inner sense of goodness and vitality. Klein viewed sexual intercourse as a highly dramatic arena in which both one's impact on the other and the quality of one's own essence were exposed and on the line. The ability to arouse and satisfy the other represented one's own compensation capacities; to give enjoyment and pleasure suggested that one's love was stronger than one's hate. The ability to be aroused and satisfied by the other suggested that one was alive, that one's internal objects were flourishing.
Klein's understanding of envy was best understood by comparing envy to greed. The infant at the breast provided the prototype. Infants, as Klein portrayed them, were intensely needy creatures. They felt dependent on the breast for nourishment, safety, and pleasure. The infant experienced the breast itself, Klein imagined, as extraordinarily plentiful and powerful. In more suspicious moments, the infant thought of the breast as hoarding its wonderful substance, good milk, for itself, enjoying its power over the infant, rather than allowing the
Klein's major contribution to psychology was her method of analyzing children's play for insight into their emotional development. 'Play Therapy' remains a standard method used by child psychologists.
Melanie Klein's research led her to conclude that children's aggressive feelings toward the mother and interpersonal relationships on development were more important than Sigmund Freud had thought. According to her biographer Phyllis Grosskurth, from Melanie Klein: Her World and Her Work, Harvard University Press, 1986: "Captivated by the concept of the unconscious, she followed its seductive lure into speculative depths from which even Freud had retreated."
In conclusion, Klein's theories, such as the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, her conception of sexuality and envy, and her discovery of projective identification as a defense have all been highly influential contributions to the field which, regardless of Klein's intentions, opened up new possibilities for psychoanalysis which were quite different than Freud's classical psychoanalytic practice and theory. The term "object relations" ultimately derived from Klein, since she felt that the infant interjects the 'whole' other with the onset of the depressive position during the ontogenesis of the self.

Chandrakant Jamadar
Asst.professor
P.G.Studies in Psychology
Maharani Arts & commerce College
MYSORE