Theories of Personalities

• The object relations theory of Melanie Klein was built on careful observations of young children.
• In contrast to Freud, who emphasized the first 4–6 years of life, Klein stressed the importance of the first 4–6 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.
• The very early tendency of infants to relate to partial objects gives their experiences an unrealistic or fantasy-like quality that affects all later interpersonal relations.
• Klein’s ideas tend to shift the focus of psychoanalytic theory from organically based stages of development to the role of early fantasy in the formation of interpersonal relationships.
• Melanie Klein was born on March 30, 1882, in Vienna, Austria, as the youngest of four children born to Dr. Moriz Reizes and his second wife, Libussa Deutsch Reizes.
• Klein believed that her birth was unplanned, leading to feelings of being rejected by her parents.
• Klein grew up in a family that was neither proreligious nor antireligious.
• Her father, a struggling physician, ended up as a dental assistant, while her mother, despite her fear of snakes, ran a shop selling plants and reptiles.
• Despite her father's limited income, Klein aspired to become a physician.
• Klein felt neglected by her elderly father, whom she saw as cold and distant, and although she loved and idolized her mother, she felt suffocated by her.
• Klein had a special fondness for her older sister Sidonie, who taught her arithmetic and reading.
• Unfortunately, when Melanie was 4 years old, Sidonie died.
• After her sister's death, Klein developed a deep attachment to her brother, Emmanuel, who became her confidant.
• Klein idolized her brother, and this infatuation may have contributed to her later difficulties in relating to men.
• At 18, her father died followed by her beloved brother 2 years after.
• Ambivalent feelings towards loved ones are common, but conscious ambivalence doesn't capture the essence of the paranoid-schizoid position.
• Introjection, according to Klein, suggests that infants fantasize about incorporating their experiences with external objects, such as the mother's breast, into their bodies.
• Projection, according to Klein, is a process where children remove both good and bad objects, imagining their feelings and impulses as external entities, to alleviate anxiety about internal forces causing destruction.
• Under pressure of ambivalence, conflict and guilt, the patient often splits the figure of the analyst, then the analyst may at certain moments be loved, at other moments hated.
• Depressive children understand their mother as both loved and hated, remorse past destructive actions, and feel empathy for her, enhancing their future interpersonal relationships and fostering better relationships.
• Introjected objects are children's fantasies, often depicting their mother as constantly present within their body, despite the fact that the real mother is not always present.
• Infants' mature ego realizes it cannot protect the mother, leading to guilt and a depressive position.
• Infants' biological predisposition to value nourishment and life instincts leads to ambivalent feelings towards a single person, a concept similar to transference feelings experienced by therapy patients, as they do not use language to identify good and bad breasts.
• Adults adopt the paranoid-schizoid position in a primitive, unconscious way, experiencing themselves as passive objects or projecting their unconscious paranoid feelings onto others to avoid destruction or to view themselves as empty or worthless.
• Klein (1955) suggested that, from very early infancy, children adopt several psychic defense mechanisms to protect their ego against the anxiety aroused by their own destructive fantasies.
• At the 5th or 6th month, an infant begins to view external objects as whole and recognizes the existence of good and bad in the same person.
• Fearing the mother's loss, infants desire to protect her from destructive impulses.
• Projection allows people to attribute their subjective opinions to others, allowing them to believe their own feelings are true, as seen in infants and adults who attribute their goodness to nurturing breasts.
• In mourning, Klein married Arthur Klein, a close friend of Emmanuel, and later regretted that this marriage at age 21 hindered her dream of becoming a physician.
• Anxious attachment styles led to higher socioemotional functioning and stress levels.
• Trust levels are influenced by attachment styles, and emotional support is particularly effective for anxious-ambivalent followers.
• Steven Rholes and colleagues (2007) found that avoidant individuals sought more information about their romantic partner's intimate feelings and dreams, while anxious individuals sought more information about their partner's intimacy-related issues.
• Klein's theory emphasizes unconscious determinants of behavior, as people acquire personal traits and attitudes on a preverbal level.
• Military officers with avoidant attachment styles had less cohesive units and lower psychological well-being.
• To deal with the nurturing breast and the frustrating breast, infants split the se objects into good and bad while also splitting their own ego, giving them a dual image of self.
• Infants introject these psychic representations into their own psychic structure and then project them onto an external object, that is, another person.
• She has a positive feeling both for her mother’s breasts and for her father’s penis, which she believes will feed her with babies.
• Attachment style is crucial in leadership and leader-follower relationships, as leaders can act as caregivers and provide security similar to parents and romantic partners.
• Costa and colleagues (2015) found that pathological jealousy participants had less secure, avoidant, and anxious-ambivalent attachment styles.