The significance of Kleinian contributions to psychoanalysis II. Freudian and Kleinian conceptions of early mental development.

This paper discusses and compares Freudian and Kleinian conceptions of the development of early mental life from the vertices of the genetic hypothesis (and reconstruction), the infantile neurosis, the conception of the evolution of the infant, the issue of reality, and the oedipus complex. In so doing, some of the newer findings of infant development are considered. We can now correlate Kleinian conceptions of early infantile reconstruction in light of these new developments; this paper seeks further to demonstrate that the classical notion of primary narcissism, which is laterally known as the conception of the self-object representation, is incompatible with notions of infantile psychology and therefore leaves the classical conception of early mental life in an ambiguous state. An attempt is made to redress this by reconciling the classical and Kleinian notions via a "dual-tract" theory.