Notes on Melanie Klein - 1882-1960 Object Relational Theorist Psychopathology was based on intrapsychic and interpersonal events presumed to have occurred during the first year of life. Excessive innate aggression or the psychic reaction to aggression was the cause of severe emotional disturbances. Her analytic technique attempted to deal with these early intrapsychic forces and the interpretation of unconscious impulses. She emphasized the importance of early object relations. Like Freud, she believed that aggression and libido are the two basic instincts. The aggressive instinct is an extension of the death instinct; libido is an extension of the life instinct. She believed that the ego did not exist at birth but only developed after. Both the instincts of aggression and libido developed after birth into unconscious fantasies, the beginning of self-defence against the primary objects, usually one of the parents. She believed that from the aggressive instinct, envy, greed,