CH5: Melanie Klein's Object Relations Theory

• Melanie Klein, the woman who developed a theory that emphasized the nurturing and loving relationship between parent and child, had neither a nurturant nor a loving relationship with her own daughter Melitta.
• 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.
• Klein insisted that the infant’s drives (hunger, sex, and so forth) are directed to an object—a breast, a penis, a vagina, and so on. A
• 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. Thus, 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.
• First, infants have basic needs cared for by their mother; next, they develop a safe symbiotic relationship with an all-powerful mother; and finally, they emerge from their mother’s protective circle and establish their separate individuality
• Difference with Freud: 1. Less emphasis on biologically-based drives and more importance on consistent patterns of interpersonal relationships.
• 2. Tend to be more maternal than paternal, stressing the intimacy and nurturing of the mother.
• 3. Human contact and relatedness, not sexual pleasure, as the prime motive of human behavior.
• Prime motive of human behavior is human contact and relatedness.
• Object, in Kleinian terms, is any person, part of a person, or mental representation of a person through which an aim is satisfied.
• Early relations with the mother or the breast become a model for all later interpersonal relationships.
• Highlighted the role of the internal psychic representations of early significant objects that have been taken into the infant’s psychic structure.