CHAPTER 5:Object Relations Theory (Melanie Klein)

• Melanie Klein

  • the woman who developed a theory that emphasized the nurturing and loving relationship between parent and child.
• Melitta

  • daughter of Melanie Klein
• Edward Glover

  • Analyst of Melitta ; Bitter rival of Melani Klein.
• Walter Schmideberg

  • Husband of Melitta; Another rival of Melanie
• Object Relations Theory

  • A reference to the work of Melanie Klein and others who have extended Freudian psychoanalysis with their emphasis on early relations to parents (objects) that influence later interpersonal relationships.
• Klein stressed the importance of the first 4 to 6 months after birth
• According to Klein, the child’s relation to the breast is fundamental and serves as a prototype for later relations to whole objects, such as mother and father
• Margaret Mahler

  • believed that children’s sense of identity rests on a three-step relationship with their mother. 
• Margaret Mahler’s steps on how children's sense of identity rests with their relationship to their mother: (1) basic needs are cared for by their mother; (2) safe symbiotic relationship; (3)  establish separate individuality. 
• Heinz Kohut

  • theorized that children develop a sense of self during early infancy when parents and others treat them as if they had an individualized sense of identity.
• John Bowlby

  • investigated infants’ attachment to their mother as well as the negative consequences of being separated from their mother. 
• Mary Ainsworth

  • developed a technique for measuring the type of attachment style an infant develops toward its caregiver
• Moriz Reizes and Libussa Deutsch Reizes

  • Parents or Melanie Klein
• Emilie

  • Favoured by Moriz and youngest sister of Melanie
• Sidonie

  • Older sister of Melanie
• When Melanie was 4 years old, Sidonie died.
• Emmanuel

  • Older brother of Melanie
• Arthur Klein

  • Close friend of Emmanuel and the husband of Melanie
• Children of Melanie and Arthur: Melitta, Hans, Erich
• Sandor Ferenczi

  • Introduced Melanie to Psychoanalysis 
• Karen Horney

  • psychoanalyzed Melitta
• Karl Abraham

  • replaced Ferenczi and is another member of Freud's inner circle.
• When Abraham dies after 14 months, Melanie decided to begin self analysis
• Ernest Jones

  • Invited Melanie to analyze his 2 kids.
• Walter Schmideberg

  • Psychoanalyst husband of Melitta 
• Hans

  • Melanie’s older son and died in a fall
• Edward Glover

  • Began an analysis with Melitta during the year Hans died.
• Klein was considered as the mother of object relations theory
• Object

  • Psychoanalytic term referring to the person or part of a person that can satisfy an instinct or drive. 
• Whereas Freud emphasized the first few years of life, Klein stressed the importance of the first 4 or 6 months
• To her, infants do not begin life with a blank slate but with an inherited predisposition to reduce the anxiety they experience as a result of the conflict produced by the forces of the life instinct and the power of the death instinct.
• Phantasies

  • are psychic representations of unconscious id instincts; they should not be confused with the conscious fantasies of older children and adults.
• Klein’s notion of internal objects suggests that these objects have a power of their own.
• Klein (1946) saw human infants as constantly engaging in a basic conflict between the life instinct and the death instinct
• Positions

  • Ways in which an infant organizes its experience in order to deal with its basic conflict of love and hate. The two categories of this are the paranoid-schizoid position and the depressive position.
• Persecutory Breast - Bad breast

  Ideal Breast - Good breast
• Paranoid Schizoid Position

  • A tendency of the infant to see the world as having the same destructive and omnipotent qualities that it possesses. 
• According to Klein, infants develop the paranoid-schizoid position during the first 3 or 4 months of life, during which time the ego’s perception of the external world is subjective and fantastic rather than objective and real.
• In the young child’s schizoid world, rage and destructive feelings are directed toward the bad breast, while feelings of love and comfort are associated with the good breast. 
• Conscious Ambivalence

  • does not capture the essence of the paranoid-schizoid position.