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representation, a technique, in which the analyst is to “switch very quick [...] from enemy to helper, from the 'bad' mother to the 'good'. [...] as the analyst assumes the hostile roles required by the playing-situation and thus subjects them to analysis, there is a constant progress in the development of the anxiety-inspiring imagos towards the kindlier identifications with their constant approximations to reality" (1929a, p.14). North American perspective , which covers mainly years between 1929 and 1932, stresses continuity with both Ferenczi and Abraham. The emphasis is on Klein’s (1929b) description of transformative role of symbolic play and creative activity (drawing, painting) representing deep seated anxieties related to aggressive wishes to destroy the mother in girls, and the capacity to symbolize unconscious frightening, sadistic aggressive feelings for the object as an important step in Ego development: “The daughter's wish to destroy her mother, to see her old, worn out, marred, is the cause of the need to represent her in full possession of her strength and beauty. By so doing, a daughter can allay her own anxiety and can endeavour to restore her mother and make her new through the portrait…when the representation of destructive wishes is succeeded by an expression of reactive tendencies, we constantly find that drawing and painting are used as means to make people anew. The case of …shows plainly that this anxiety of the little girl is of great importance in the ego-development of women and is one of the incentives to achievement. But, on the other hand, this anxiety may be the cause of serious illness and many inhibitions. As with the boy's castration-dread, the effect of his anxiety on the ego- development depends on the maintenance of a certain optimum and a satisfactory interplay between the separate factors” (Klein 1929b, p. 443). Regarding the relation between the symbolism and the multiply symbolic complex representation , Klein (1932) fashions a more comprehensive encompassing theoretical statement of an earlier reiteration from five years prior is brought forth: “The child expresses its phantasies, its wishes and its actual experiences in a symbolic way through play and games. In doing so it makes use of the same archaic and phylogenetic mode of expression, the same language, as it were, that we are familiar with in dreams; and we can only fully understand this language if we approach it in the way Freud has taught us to approach the language of dreams. Symbolism is only a part of it. If we wish to understand the child's play correctly in relation to its whole behaviour during the analytic hour we must not be content to pick out the meaning of the separate symbols, striking as they often are, but must take into consideration all the mechanisms and methods of representation employed by the dream-work, never losing sight of the relation of each factor to the situation as a whole” (Klein 1932, p. 29)
In Latin American perspective , the Kleinian school approaches the issue of representation through the vertex of symbolization, building on Jones’ (1912/1948) “Theory
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