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contributes to make the child “equate the organs in question with other things” which then, owing to this equation, turn into objects of anxiety, “and so he is impelled constantly to make other and new equations which form the basis of his interest in new objects and of symbolism” (1930a, pp.25-26; 1930b, p. 220). Additionally, for Klein: “A sufficient quantity of anxiety is the necessary basis for an abundance of symbol-formation and of phantasy; an adequate capacity on the part of the ego to tolerate anxiety is essential if anxiety is to be satisfactorily worked over, if this basic phase is to have a favourable issue and if the development of the ego is to be successful” (Klein, 1930a, p. 26; 1930b, p. 221), or, in Latin American version, translating anxiety as ‘anguish’ [angustia], “a sufficient amount of anguish is a necessary basis for the abundant formation of symbols and phantasy” (1930c. 211), and to stay in contact with reality. However, the excess of ‘anguish’ –arising, for example, as a result of oral sadism– leads to the opposite effect: the ego stops its development and withdraws from reality, stopping the formation of symbols. This excess of anguish constitutes then an impediment to interacting with reality. Consequently, in analytic play therapy, the analyst interprets, names, and puts words to these archaic phantasies, with the aim to reduce the magnitude of anxieties, therefore lessening such anguish and suffering. The baseline principle for Klein is that what children play and do during their analytic sessions represent, above all, attacks on the mother's womb and parental coitus, which is seen (by a child) as sadistic. North American analysts (Lew Aron 1995) highlight the developmental significance of Klein’ (1929a,b) and later Britton’s (1989) formulation of a phantasy of a combined parental figure, predating symbolization. The combined parent figure represents a fusion of elements (i.e., part-objects) whose qualities are not clearly distinguished and whose union produces a sense of chaos. The phantasies that constitute the combined parent figures become transformed as the child develops the capacity for whole-object relations and establishes a separate sense of self with the capacity for symbolization. As children move from functioning predominantly in the paranoid-schizoid mode to functioning predominantly in the depressive mode, the internal imago of the combined parent figure becomes transformed into the image of their parents as separate whole-objects in a mutually gratifying interaction with each other. Now, with a sense of themselves as separate and with the capacity for symbolic thought, children can elaborate the group of phantasies which constitutes the primal scene. III. Aab. Hanna Segal (and Sanchez’ Contemporary Elaboration) Segal (1950, 1957, 1979) made a major contribution in that she described the merger of symbol and referent as a symbolic equation and indicated that the non- differentiation between the thing symbolized and the symbol represented a disturbance
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