cant impact on how individuals interact with their environment (Klein, 1997). According to Klein, an individual's inner world largely consists of unconscious phantasies, or mental representations of the instincts (Ogden, 1990). Therefore, Klein argued that even infants possess unconscious phantasies by converting their need to eat to the phantasy of an associated external object such as the breast (Segal, 1964). From the moment of birth, infants generate unconscious phantasies that consist of feelings, thoughts and instincts, which are projected at objects in the external world (Segal, 1992).
In the process of generating phantasies, infants also learn to establish object relations by projection and introjection. Depending on the infants' relationship with the external objects, they will also experience internal objects that are categorized as either good (leading to feelings of security) or bad (leading to feelings of anxiety). Since infants perceive internal objects to have an independent existence, they believe that when they "contain good objects, [they] experience trust, confidence and security" and vice versa. Through phantasies, infants can internalize their feelings by turning them into internal objects or project them to external objects in the respective processes of introjection and projection (Klein, 1997; Hinshelwood, 1994). Phantasies serve an important role for infants in regulating their emotions by projecting negative feelings towards external objects, thus constituting a defense against internal reality (Segal, 1964).
Klein's rich and vivid description of the phantasy life of the infant and young child conflicted with Anna Freud's assertion that young children lacked such psychological abilities. Since they could not free associate, young children could not be analyzed (Young, 2000). Furthermore, while Klein asserted that infants are able to establish object relations, Anna Freud argued that infancy is ...