chapter 5

• Object relations theory


  An offspring of Freud's instinct theory, but differs in 3 ways:

  1. Places less emphasis on biologically based drives and more importance on consistent patterns of interpersonal relationships

  2. Tends to be more maternal, stressing the intimacy and nurturing of the mother, rather than the power and control of the father

  3. Sees human contact and relatedness, not sexual pleasure, as the prime motive of human behavior
• Object relations theory


  • Concept has many meanings, with different theorists focusing on different aspects:
  • Margaret Mahler: Infant's struggle to gain autonomy and sense of self
  • Heinz Kohut: Formation of the self
  • John Bowlby: Stages of separation anxiety
  • Mary Ainsworth: Styles of attachment
• Object


  (in Freudian terms) Any person, part of a person, or thing through which the aim of a drive is satisfied
• Introjection


  Taking internal psychic representations of early significant objects, such as the mother's breast or the father's penis, into one's own psychic structure
• Projection


  Projecting one's internal psychic representations onto one's partner in a relationship
• Adult relationships are not always what they seem, as they contain remnants of each person's earlier experiences with significant objects
• Melanie Klein continued to regard herself as a Freudian, but her emphasis on the importance of very early childhood and her analytic technique with children were not accepted by Freud or his daughter Anna
• Melanie Klein's differences with Anna Freud


  Climaxed after Anna Freud moved to London in 1938, as the English school of psychoanalysis was becoming the "Kleinian School"
• In 1946, the British Society accepted three training procedures - the traditional one of Melanie Klein, the one advocated by Anna Freud, and a Middle Group that was more eclectic
• Drives


  Innate drives or instincts, including a death instinct
• Object


  The thing that a drive is directed towards, e.g. the good breast for the hunger drive
• Introjection


  Fantasizing about taking external objects into one's own psychic structure
• Projection


  Fantasizing that one's own feelings and impulses reside in another person
• Splitting


  Keeping apart incompatible impulses by developing a picture of both the "good me" and the "bad me"
• Projective identification


  Projecting one's own feelings and impulses onto another person and then identifying with that person
• Paranoid-schizoid position


  • Infant's way of organizing experiences that includes both paranoid feelings of being persecuted and a splitting of internal and external objects into good and bad
• Depressive position


  • Infant recognizes that the loved object and the hated object are now one and the same, experiences anxiety over losing the loved object, and desires to make reparation for previous destructive urges
• Infants do not use language to identify the good and bad breast, but have a biological predisposition to attach positive value to nourishment and negative value to hunger</b>
• When adults adopt the paranoid-schizoid position, they do so in a primitive, unconscious fashion and may experience themselves as a passive object rather than an active subject
• An incomplete resolution of the depressive position can result in lack of trust, morbid mourning at the loss of a loved one, and a variety of other psychic disorders
• Projection


  People believe their own subjective opinions are true by projecting their own feelings onto another person
• Splitting


  Infants keep apart incompatible impulses by developing a picture of both the "good me" and the "bad me"
• Splitting


  • It can be a positive and useful mechanism if not extreme and rigid
  • Excessive and inflexible splitting can lead to pathological repression
• Projective identification


  Infants split off unacceptable parts of themselves, project them into another object, and then introject them back into themselves in a changed or distorted form
• Projective identification exerts a powerful influence on adult interpersonal relations, unlike simple projection which can exist wholly in phantasy
• Internalizations


  The person takes in (introjects) aspects of the external world and then organizes those introjections into a psychologically meaningful framework
• Ego


  Reaches maturity at a much earlier stage than Freud had assumed, with the ability to sense both destructive and loving forces and manage them through splitting, projection, and introjection
• Superego


  Emerges much earlier in life, is not an outgrowth of the Oedipus complex, and is much more harsh and cruel than Freud's conception
• Oedipus complex


  Begins at a much earlier age than Freud suggested, overlaps with the oral and anal stages, and reaches its climax during the genital stage at around age 3 or 4
• Female Oedipal development


  • The little girl sees her mother's breast as both "good and bad", then develops a positive relationship to her father's penis as the giver of children
  • Under less ideal circumstances, the little girl will see her mother as a rival and fantasize robbing her mother of her father's penis and stealing her mother's babies
• Male Oedipal development


  • The little boy shifts some of his oral desires from his mother's breast to his father's penis, adopting a passive homosexual attitude toward his father before moving to a heterosexual relationship with his mother
  • The boy develops oral-sadistic impulses toward his father and fears castration, but is able to establish positive relationships with both parents
• A healthy resolution of the Oedipus complex depends on children allowing their mother and father to come together and have sexual intercourse with each other, with no remnant of rivalry remaining
• People are born with two strong drives - the life instinct and the death instinct, leading to a lifelong struggle to reconcile unconscious psychic images of good and bad, pleasure and pain
• The most crucial stage of life is the first few months, when relationships with mother and other significant objects form a model for later interpersonal relations
• Psychological birth


  The child becomes an individual separate from their parents, surrendering security for autonomy, over the first 3 years of life
• Margaret Mahler


  Psychologist who studied the psychological birth of the individual that takes place during the first 3 years of life
• Mahler received her PhD from the University of Vienna


  1923
• Mahler moved to New York and was a consultant to the Children's Service of the New York State Psychiatric Institute


  1938
• Mahler was clinical professor of psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine


  1955-1974
• Mahler's focus


  • The psychological birth of the individual that takes place during the first 3 years of life, a time when a child gradually surrenders security for autonomy