Melanie Klein’s Object Relations Theory

StructureManuel Arkoncel

Comparison to Freud’s Theory

Places less emphasis on biologically based drives

More importance on consistent patterns of interpersonal relationships

Emphasis on the first 4 to 6 months

Tends to be more maternal

Stresses the intimacy and nurturing of the mother

Human contact and relatedness as the prime motive of human behavior

Psychic Life of the Infant

Infants do not begin life with a blank slate

Inherit a disposition to reduce anxiety caused by the conflict of life instinct and death instinct

Phantasies

Objects

Phantasies

Psychic representations of unconscious id instincts

Infants possess an active phantasy life

Different with the conscious fantasies of oler children and adults

Infants possess unconscious images of “good” and “bad”

As the infant matures, newer unconscious phantasies emerge

Oedipus Complex

Objects

Hunger drive- good breast

Sex drive-sexual organ

Early infancy children relate to these external objects both in fantasy and reality

In their active fantasy, infants introject these external objects.

ProcessManuel Arkoncel

Psychic Defense Mechanisms

Used by children to protect ego against the anxiety arouse by their own fantasies

Introjection

Projection

Splitting

Projective Identification

Introjection

Infants fantasize taking into their body the perceptions and experiences that they have had with the external object

Begins with the first feeding

Infants usually Introject good objects, but sometimes introject bad objects in order to gain control over them

Introjected objects are not accurate representations.

They are colored by children’s fantasies

Projection

Opposite of Introjection

Used to get rid of objects

The fantasy that one’s own feelings and impulses actually reside in another person and not within one’s body

Children project both good and bad images onto external objects

People can project good impulses

Allows people to believe that their own subjective opinions are true

Splitting

Keeping apart incompatible impulses

Infant develops a picture of both the “good me” and the “bad me”

Can have a positive or negative effect on the child

Projective Identification

Infants split off unacceptable parts of themselves, project them into another object and finally introject them back into themselves in a changed form

Exists only in the world of real interpersonal relationship

Growth and DevelopmentArianne Alli

Growth and Development

PositionsParanoid-Schizoid Position

Depressive Position

Internalizations– Ego– Superego– Oedipus Complex

• Female Oedipal Complex• Male Oedipal Complex

Positions• What are Positions?

– Ways of dealing with both internal and external objects

– “Stages” in the normal development of ego and object relationships

– Alternate back and forth; not periods of time or phases of development through which a person passes

– The Paranoid-Schizoid Position and the Depressive Position both occur in the pre-Oedipal, oral phase of development

Positions

• Paranoid-Schizoid Position– 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

– Ego splits itself (makes it possible for infant to introject and identify with the good)

– First 3-4 months; Ego’s perception of the world is subjective and fantastic

– Persecutory breast– Ideal breast

Positions

• Depressive Position– Feelings of anxiety over losing a loved

object with a sense of guilt for wanting to destroy that object

– Starts at 5th or 6th month after birth when infants begin to view external objects as a whole

– See that good and bad exist in the same person; more realistic image of the mother

– Ego is beginning to mature, it can tolerate some of its destructive feelings

Internalizations

• What are Internalizations?– The person takes in (introjects) aspects of

the external world and then organize those introjections into a psychologically meaningful framework

– Process by which personality is created

Internalizations

• Ego– Ego reaches maturity at a much earlier stage

than Freud had assumed– Klein ignored the id– Although ego is mostly unorganized at birth, it is

strong enough to feel anxiety, use defense mechanisms, and form early object relations in both phantasy and reality

– Infants introject the good breast and the bad breast

– The breast becomes the prototype– Ego splits itself

Internalizations

• Superego– Differs from Freud’s in 3 ways

• Emerges much earlier in life• Not an outgrowth of the Oedipus complex• Much more harsh an cruel

– In full operation since 2 ¾ - 4 years of age– Early superego produces terror– Grows along with the Oedipus complex

Internalizations

• Oedipus Complex– Differs from Freud’s in 4 ways

• Begins during the earliest months of life, overlaps with the oral and anal stages, reaches its climax in the genital stage

• Children’s fear of retaliation from their parents for their wish of emptying their parent’s body

• Children retaining positive feeling for both parents throughout Oedipal years

• The complex serves the same need for both genders (establish positive attitude with good object & avoid bad object)

Internalizations

• Oedipus Complex– Female Oedipal Complex

• If the Oedipal stage proceeds smoothly, the child will adopt a “feminine” position and have a positive relationship with both parents

• If not, the little girl with see her mother as a rival; penis envy stems from the little girl’s wishes to internalize her father’s penis and to receive a baby from him

Internalizations

• Oedipus Complex– Male Oedipal Complex

• Feminine position• Castration Anxiety

PsychopathologyValerie Asetre

• Positions – paranoid-schizoid and depressive are normal

• To have a healthy development, the infant must undergo splitting of itself, its external world, and its objects into two categories: the good and the bad

• Projecting the bad and introjecting the good

• It is normal to switch back and forth between the two positions, but fixation can be a source of later psychopathology

Psychotherapy and ChangeValerie Asetre

• Play therapy – substitute for Freud’s free association

• Gives the child an opportunity to do as he/she pleases without pressuring, intruding, prodding, or nagging.

• It is not automatically assumed that the child’s behavior have hidden meanings.

•  To alleviate the early anxieties, and modify the harshness of internalized objects and inner persecutors.

• “Healing is brought about by providing a successful experience of narcissism or attachment (almost like a re-parenting), replacing the earlier emotional failure.”

Later Views on Object RelationsValerie AsetreArianne Alli

Later Views on Object Relations

• Margaret Mahler

• Heinz Kohut

• John Bowlby

• Mary Ainsworth

Margaret Mahler

• Normal autism – from birth until 3-4 weeks

• It is the first major developmental stage

• Disagreed with Klein, saying that this is a period of absolute primary narcissism.

• An “objectless” state

• Normal symbiosis – begins around 4th to 5th week until the 4th or 5th month.

• Object relations still have not yet begun.

• Separation-individuation – from about the 4th or 5th month until about the 30th to 36th month.

• Children achieve a sense of individuation

• Has four substages:– Differentiation– Practicing– Rapprochement– Libidinal Object Constancy

Heinz Kohut

• Labeled his version of object relations theory as “self-psychology”

• Focused on narcissism

• Defined self as “the center of the individual’s universe”

• Believed that infants are naturally narcissistic

• The early self’s two basic narcissistic needs:– Need to exhibit the grandiose self– Need to acquire an idealized image of both

parents

John Bolwby

• Began training in child psychiatry under Melanie Klein

• Dissatisfied with the object relations perspective

• Attachment theory

• Separation Anxiety• Protest stage• Despair stage• Detachment stage

Mary Ainsworth

• Influenced by Bowlby’s theory

• Strange Situation

• Attachment styles– Secure attachment– Anxious-resistant attachment– Anxious-avoidant attachment

Concept of HumanityManuel Arkoncel

Concept of Humanity

• Interaction between mother and infant lays the foundation for future personality development

• Early interpersonal experiences serves as a prototype for subsequent interpersonal relations

• High on determinism, low on free choice

• Either optimistic (healthy relationship) or pessimistic (unhealthy relationship)

Concept of Humanity

• More casual than teleological

• High on unconscious determinants of behavior

• Nature over nurture; the theory leans more toward social determinants of behavior

• Similarities over uniqueness