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• Object Relation Theory


  Based on careful observations of infants, emphasizes interpersonal relations, primarily in the family and especially between mother and child. "Object" means person, and especially the significant person that is the object or target of another's feelings or intentions. "Relations" refers to interpersonal relations and suggests the residues of past relationships that affect a person in the present.
• Klein proclaimed herself as the mother of psychoanalysis, but Freud disagreed
• While Freud focused on the first 4 to 6 years


  Klein emphasizes the importance of 4 to 6 months after birth
• Object relations theory


  • Places less emphasis on biologically based drives and more importance on consistent patterns of interpersonal relationships
  • More maternal, stressing the intimacy and nurturing of the mother
  • Sees human contact and relatedness-not sexual pleasure-as the prime motive of human behavior
• Fantasies/Phantasies


  Infants at birth already possess a fantasy about life, they already have their unconscious images of "good" and "bad"
• Objects


  Drives or instincts must have an object, this is where they are exerted and applied. Klein believed that an infant relates their drives to external objects both in fantasy and reality
• Positions


  • Paranoid Schizoid
  • Depressive
• Paranoid Schizoid Position


  Develops during the first 3 or 4 months of life, a way of organizing experiences that includes both paranoid feelings of being persecuted and a splitting of internal and external objects into the good and the bad. The ego's perception of external world is subjective and fantastic rather than objective and real. Infants have a biological predisposition to attach a positive value to nourishment and the life instinct, and then identify the source as an object of drive or instinct which they desire to be in control with.
• Paranoid Schizoid Position - Objects

  • Persecutory Breast (BAD BREAST)
  • Ideal breast (GOOD BREAST)
• Depressive Position


  Begins to surface by the age of 5-6 months when an infant can already view an object as incorporated both good and bad feelings. Where an infant feels the anxiety of losing a loved object accompanied by the sense of guilt for wanting to destroy that same object. Infant realizes that their mother might leave them so they begin to protect her.
• Psychic Defense Mechanisms


  • Introjection
  • Projection
  • Splitting
  • Projective Identification
• Introjection


  Infants fantasize taking into their body these perceptions and experiences that they had with the external object, originally the mother's breast. When good objects were introjected it helps them protect their ego from anxiety, however when bad objects were the ones introjected they become internal persecutors.
• Projection


  Infants project their own feelings and impulses onto another person, usually their parents.
• Splitting


  Enables them to see the positive and negative side of themselves or others. It may be both beneficial and destructive since it may recognize the good me and the bad me.
• Projective Identification


  A psychic defense mechanism in which infants split off unacceptable parts of themselves, project them into another object and finally introject them back into themselves in a changed or distorted form.
• Ego


  Unlike Freud who claims that Id dominates a child's unconscious, Klein believed that during this stage, ego though weak and unorganized can already feel anxiety and is strong enough to use different mechanisms. The ego matures through the first experience of feeding providing him/her with love and security.
• Superego


  Klein claims that superego emerges much earlier in life, not as result of resolved Oedipus complex and is much more harsh and cruel. Klein further believes that early superego produces not guilt but terror to infants.
• Oedipus Complex


  Even though Klein claims that her idea of the Oedipus complex is an extension of Freud's, it has many distinct characteristics where it begins at a much earlier time of life, a significant part of it represents the child's fear of retaliation from his/her parents, and the child's retention of positive feelings towards both parents. It enables children to recognize between good and bad.
• Goals of Object Relation Therapy

  The focus of treatment is to show the client that they can improve relationships and interactions with others by removing the "object" that they naturally attach to events and people. The therapist-to-client relationship is seen as a mirror of the mother-to-child relationship, allowing an individual to create the type of healing bond they may have missed during childhood.
• Margaret Mahler: Later Theories in Object Relation


  An individual's psychological birth begins during the first weeks of postnatal life and continues for the next 3 years or so. By psychological birth, Mahler meant that the child becomes an individual separate from his or her primary caregiver, an accomplishment that leads ultimately to a sense of identity.
• Mahler's Stages of Development

  • Normal Autism (3-4 weeks old)
  • Normal Symbiosis (4-5 weeks old)
  • Separation-individuation (5-36 months old)
• Normal Autism


  A newborn infant satisfies various needs within the all-powerful protective orbit of a mother's care. Neonates have a sense of omnipotence, because, like unhatched birds, their needs are cared for automatically and without their having to expend any effort.
• Normal Symbiosis


  During this time, "the infant behaves and functions as though he and his mother were an omnipotent system-a dual unity within one common boundary". By this age the infant can recognize the mother's face and can perceive her pleasure or distress.
• Separation-individuation


  Children become psychologically separated from their mothers, achieve a sense of individuation, and begin to develop feelings of personal identity. Young children in this stage experience the external world as being more dangerous than it was during the first two stages.
• Separation-individuation Substages


  • Differentiation (5-10 months)
  • Practicing (7-16 months)
  • Rapprochement (16 to 25 months of age)
  • Libidinal Object Constancy
• Heinz Kohut


  Emphasized the process by which the self evolves from a vague and undifferentiated image to a clear and precise sense of individual identity. Infants require adult caregivers not only to gratify physical needs but also to satisfy basic psychological needs. The self is also the child's focus of interpersonal relations, shaping how he or she will relate to parents and other self-objects.
• Kohut's Narcissistic Needs


  • Need to exhibit the grandiose self
  • Need to acquire an idealized image of one or both parents
• John Bowlby's Attachment Theory


  Firmly believed that the attachments formed during childhood have an important impact on adulthood. Childhood attachments are crucial to later development, so investigators should study childhood directly and not rely on distorted retrospective accounts from adults.
• Stages of Separation Anxiety

  • Protest stage
  • Despair
  • Detachment
• Assumptions of Attachment Theory

  A responsive and accessible caregiver (usually the mother) must create a secure base for the child. The bonding relationship (or lack thereof) becomes internalized and serves as a mental working model on which future friendships and love relationships are built.
• Ainsworth's Strange Situation Attachment Styles

  • Secure attachment
  • Anxious-resistant attachment
  • Anxious-avoidant attachment
• Karen Horney: Psychoanalytic Social Psychology Theory


  Criticized Freud's theories, objected to his ideas on feminine psychology, and believed psychoanalysis should move beyond instinct theory and emphasize the importance of cultural influences in shaping personality. Neuroses are not the result of instincts but rather of the person's "attempt to find paths through a wilderness full of unknown dangers".
• Basic Hostility


  If parents do not satisfy the child's needs for safety and satisfaction, the child develops feelings of basic hostility toward the parents. However, children repress their hostility toward their parents and have no awareness of it.
• Basic Anxiety


  Repressed hostility that leads to profound feelings of insecurity and a vague sense of apprehension. Basic anxiety itself is not a neurosis, but "it is the nutritive soil out of which a definite neurosis may develop at any time".
• Protective Mechanisms


  • Affection
  • Submissiveness
  • Prestige
  • Possession
  • Withdrawal
• Neurotic Needs


  • The neurotic need for affection and approval
  • The neurotic need for a powerful partner
  • The neurotic need to restrict one's life within narrow borders
  • The need for power
• Withdrawal


  Developing an independence from others or by becoming emotionally detached from them
• Neurotic Needs


  • The neurotic need for affection and approval
  • The neurotic need for a powerful partner
  • The neurotic need to restrict one's life within narrow borders
  • The need for power
  • The neurotic need to exploit others
  • The neurotic need for social recognition or prestige
  • The neurotic need for personal admiration
  • The neurotic need for ambition and personal achievement
  • The neurotic need for self-sufficiency and independence
  • The neurotic need for perfection and unassailability
• Neurotics attempt to please others


  Try to live up to the expectations of others, tend to dread self-assertion, and are uncomfortable with the hostility of others as well as the hostile feelings within themselves
• Neurotic need for a powerful partner


  Includes an overvaluation of love and a dread of being alone or deserted