Object Relations Theory

Melanie Klein
 Introduction
• Child of Freud’s instinct theory
• Differs in three ways:
1. Less emphasis on biological based
drives & more importance on
interpersonal relationships
2. More maternal stressing intimacy and
nurture
3. Human contact and relatedness as prime
motive of human behavior (not sex)
 Introduction
• Object Relations theorists:
• Margaret S. Mahler – infant’s struggle to
gain autonomy and sense of self
• Otto Kernberg – combines drive theory,
ego psychology, and object relations
• Heinz Kohut – formation of self
• John Bowlby – stages of separation
anxiety
 Introduction
• Klein – mother of object relations theory
• Freud (Father of object relations theory)
– Instincts and rives have an impetus, a source,
an aim, and an object
– Main aim – to reduce tension, that is to
achieve pleasure
– The object of the drive is any person, part of
the person through which the aim is satisfied
 Introduction
• Object Relations Theory – begins with
Freud’s assumptions
• Then speculate about the relationship (real
or fantasy) between the baby and the
breast become model for all later
interpersonal relationship
 Introduction
• Adult relationships –
• part is internal psychic representation of
early significant objects (such as mother’s
breasts or father’s penis)
• These are introjected – taken into the
infant’s psychic structure
• Then projected onto one’s partner
 Introduction
• Klein considered herself as Freudian
• Extended psychoanalytic theory beyond
the boundaries set by Freud
• Freud had little opinion of Klein’s work
Psychic Life of the Infant
 Infant’s Psychic Life
• Klein stressed the importance of the first 4 to 6
months of life
• Infants do not begin with a blank slate
• Infants have an inherited predisposition to
reduce anxiety they experience
• Anxiety due to conflict produced by forces on the
life instinct and power of death instinct
• Infant’s readiness to act or react presupposes
the existence of the phylogenetic endowment
 Fantasies
• Infant, even at birth, possesses an active
fantasy life
• Psychic representations of unconscious id
instincts; do not confuse with fantasies of
older children and adults
• Basically infants possess unconscious
images of “good” and “bad”. (Full stomach
= good, empty stomach = bad)
 Fantasies
• Infants fall asleep sucking on their fingers
– fantasizing mother’s good breast inside
themselves
• Infants who cry and kick their legs –
fantasizing they are kicking or destroying
the bad breast (similar to Sullivan’s theory
of good mother & bad mother (chapter 8).
 Fantasies
• As infant matures fantasies connected
with the breasts continue to exert itself on
the psychic life. New ones also emerge.
• Fantasies – shaped by reality and
inherited predispositions
• Fantasies – unconscious – can be
contradictory
 Objects
• Humans have innate drives or instincts –
including the death instinct
• Drives must have objects
• Hunger drive – good breast = object
• Objects starts with breast, then later
extends to face, and hands which attend
to his needs and gratify them
• Infants introject these objects into their
psychic life
 Objects
• Introjected objects are more than internal
thoughts about external objects
• Introjected objects are fantasies of
internalizing the object in concrete and
physical terms
• Good breast – to take it into myself so that
I will be nourished always (good full feeling
– never hungry)
Positions
 Positions
• Infants – constantly engaging in basic
conflict of life and death instincts (good
and bad, love and hate, creativity and
destructivity)
• As ego moves towards integration and
away from disintegration, infants naturally
prefer gratifying sensations over frustrating
sensations.
 Positions
• To deal with dichotomy of good and bad
feelings, infants organize experiences into
positions (ways of dealing with both
internal and external objects
• Positions (not stages of development) to
indicate positions alternate back and forth
• Not periods of time
• Positions represent normal social growth
and development
 Paranoid-Schizoid Position
• Good breast, bad breast – alternating
experiences of gratification and frustration
• These threaten the infants’ vulnerable ego
existence
• Control breast by devouring and harboring
it
• At the same time death instinct fantasizes
damaging the breast (biting, tearing, or
annihilating it)
 Paranoid-Schizoid
• Two opposing feelings to the same object
at the same time – splits the ego
• Ego retains both life and death instinct
while deflecting parts of both instincts onto
the breasts
• now the fear moves from death instinct to
the persecutory breast (breast that
persecutes it)
• But there is a relationship with the ideal
breast which gives love, comfort and
gratification
 Paranoid-Schizoid Position
• Desire to keep ideal breast inside itself as
a protection against annihilation by
persecutors
• To control the good breast and fight of
persecutors, the infant adopts a paranoid-
schizoid position
• A way of organizing experiences that
includes both paranoid feelings of being
persecuted and splitting of internal and
external objects onto the good and the bad
 Paranoid-Schizoid Position
• Infants develop the during the first 3 to 4
months of life
• Ego’s perception of world at this time is
subjective and fantastic rather than
objective and real.
• Child must keep the good breast and bad
breast separate because to confuse them
would mean losing the good breast and its
safe harbor
 Paranoid-Schizoid Position
• Infants do not use language to identify
good or bad breast
• They attach positive value to nourishment
and the life instinct
• Attach negative value to hunger and death
instinct
• This splitting of world serves as a
prototype for future ambivalent feelings
towards a single person
 Paranoid-Schizoid Position
• Ambivalent feelings are projected onto
loved ones
• This is not a conscious ambivalence
• Adults adopt a position in a primitive,
unconscious fashion
• Experience self as a passive object rather
than an active subject (he is dangerous vs
he is dangerous to me)
 Paranoid-Schizoid Position
• Other people may project unconscious
paranoid feelings onto others – to avoid
their own destruction by the malevolent
breast
• Still others may protect their unconscious
positive feelings onto another person and
see the person as being perfect: while
viewing self as empty or worthless
 Depressive Position
• Begins in the 5th or 6th month
• Infants begin to view external objects as
whole and to see that good and bad can
exist in the same person
• Infant also begins to see a more realistic
picture of mother
• Mother is an independent person who can
be both good and bad
 Depressive Position
• Ego matures so that it can tolerate its own
destructive feelings rather than projecting
them outwards
• However, develops a fear of losing his
mother
• So he tries to protect mother from his own
destructive forces
• But ego realizes that it lacks the capacity to
protect mother from self – this builds guilt
• Losing a loved one + guilt = depressive
position
 Depressive Position
• Reproach themselves for destructive
urges to their mother
• Desire to make reparation for previous
attacks
• Mother is a whole and is endangered –
develops empathy which is beneficial for
future interpersonal relationships
 Depressive Position
• Depressive position is resolved when they feel
they have made reparation & that their mother
will not go away
• When depressive position is resolved – children
close split between the good and the bad mother
• Able to experience love from and for their
mother
• Incomplete resolution – lack of trust, morbid
mourning at loss of a loved one, and a variety of
psychic disorders
Psychic Defense Mechanisms
 Psychic Defense Mechanisms
• From very early infancy – children adopt
many psychic defense mechanisms to
protect ego against anxiety aroused by
their own destructive fantasies
• These destructive feelings originate with
oral-sadistic anxiety concerning the breast
• To control anxieties, infants use defense
mechanisms – introjection, projection,
splitting, and projective identification
 Introjection
• Introjection – infants fantasize taking into
their body those perceptions and
experiences that they have had with the
external object
• Starts with first feeding
• Infant tries to introject good objects – to
take them inside itself as a protection
against anxiety
 Introjection
• Sometimes infants introject bad objects
(the bad breast or the bad penis) in order
to gain control over them
• Introjecting bad objects – they become
internal persecutors capable of terrifying
the infant leaving frightening residues that
may be expressed in dreams or fairy tales
– big bad wolf, or snow white and the
seven dwarfs
 Introjection
• Introjected objects are not accurate
representations of the real objects
• These are colored by children’s fantasies
• Children fantasize that their mother is
always present – feel mother is inside their
body
 Projection
• Children use projection to get rid of good
or bad objects
• Projection – fantasy that one’s own feeling
and impulses actually reside in the other
person and not within one’s own body
• By projecting destructive impulses outside,
anxiety is gone
 Projection
• Children project both good and bad
images onto external objects, especially
their parents
• Example projection of a desire to castrate
his father so he fears his father wants to
castrate him
 Projection
• People can also project good impulses
• Infants feel good about mother’s breast
• They will project this good feeling to the
breast and imagine that the breast feels
good.
• Older people project love to another and
think the other person is in love with them.
• Projections allows people to believe that
their own subjective opinions are true
 Splitting
• Infants can only manage good and bad
aspects of themselves and of external
objects by splitting them
• In order to split objects, ego must be split
also
• Infants then paint a picture of “good me”
and “bad me”
• This enables them to deal with both
pleasurable and destructive impulses to
objects
 Splitting
• Can have either a positive or negative
effect on the infant
• Positive – if it is not extreme and rigid.
This enables the person to
– see both the positive and negative aspects of
themselves
– Evaluate their behavior as good or bad
– Differentiate between likable and unlikable
acquaintances
 Splitting
• Negative – excessive and inflexible
• Leads to pathological repression
• Cannot split the good me from bad me
• They cannot introject bad experiences to
good ego (cannot accept their own bad
behavior)
• They deal with these destructive and
terrifying impulses by repressing them
 Projective Identification
• Projective identification – infants split off
unacceptable parts of self, project these
on to other objects, and introject them
back into themselves in a changed or
distorted form
• By taking the object back into itself, the
infant feel that they have become like the
object (identify with the object)
 Projection Identification
• Infants split off the parts of their own
destructive impulse
• They project this on to the bad frustrating
breast
• They then introject the breast back to
identify with the breast
• It permits them to gain control over the
dreaded and wonderful breast
 Projection Identification
• Husband with strong unwanted tendencies
to dominate others projects this to his wife
• He then perceives his wife as domineering
• He then subtly tries to get wife to be
domineering by becoming excessively
submissive
• Thus the wife displays the very tendencies
that he did not want in himself
Internalization
 Internalization
• Internalization – the organization of
introjection of external world into a
psychologically meaningful framework
1. Ego
2. Superego
3. Oedipus complex
 Ego
• Ego exists at birth and able to sense both
destructive and loving forces
• Unorganized at birth but can feel anxiety, use
defense mechanisms, and form early object
relations (in both fantasy and reality)
• All experiences even not feeding is evaluated by
the ego (“good” or “bad”)
• First feeding – prototype for ego’s future
development and individual’s interpersonal
relationships
 Ego
• Before a unified ego emerges, it must first
be split (“good me” and “bad me”)
• This allows them to manage the dualistic
perception of the external world
• Yet infants strive for integration but are
experiencing the dual opposing forces
• As ego matures, images are more realistic
and partial objects – ego get more
integrated
 Superego
• Different from Freud
• Emerges earlier in life, not an outgrowth of
Oedipus complex, it is more harsh and
cruel
• Mature ego produces feelings of inferiority
and terror (not just guilt)
 Superego
• Children – fear of being devoured, cut up, or torn
into pieces (exaggerated reality)
• Anxiety cause by own destructive instinct
• To manage this, ego mobilizes libido (life
instinct)
• However, life and death cannot be completely
separated so ego is forced to defend itself
• This defense is the beginning of the superego
• Superego – aggressive self to defend against
own destructive tendencies – Reason for anti-
social and criminal tendencies
 Superego
• 5 year old child superego similar to what Freud
described
• Arouses little anxiety but great guilt
• Lost it’s severity and is being transformed into
realistic conscience
• Klein – no to superego as a product of Oedipus
• Superego grows along with the Oedipus then
emerges as realistic guilt once Oedipus is
resolved
 Oedipus Complex
• Extension of Freud’s theory
• Begins at a much younger age (earlier
months around the oral or anal stage,
reaches climax at genital stage at 3 to 4
years old)
• Note: Klein preferred the word “genital”
rather than “phallic” stage
 Oedipus
• Significant part of Oedipus Complex is
child’s fear or retaliation from their parent
of their fantasy of emptying their parent’s
body
• Klein also stressed the importance of
retaining a positive feeling to both parents
during these Oedipal years
 Oedipus Complex
• Early Oedipus complex time – to establish
positive attitude with good object and
avoid bad object
• In this position, children can direct love
either alternatively or simultaneously to
both parents
• Children are then able to have
homosexual and heterosexual relations
with their parents
 Male Oedipal Development
• Early oedipal development – boy shifts oral
desire for mother’s breast to his father’s penis –
the feminine position
• Adopts a passive homosexual attitude to his
father
• Moves to heterosexual relationship with mother
but because of previous homosexual
relationship with father – no fear father will
castrate him
• Boy must have a happy feeling about father’s
penis before he can value his own
 Male Oedipal Development
• As boy matures, develops oral-sadistic
impulses towards father (bite it off or
murder father)
• This arouse castration anxiety that father
will retaliate
• Boy then convinces self that having sexual
intercourse with mother could be
extremely dangerous to him
 Male Oedipal Development
• Boy’s Oedipal complex is partially resolved
by his castration anxiety
• More important factor of resolution – ability
to establish positive relationship with both
parents as whole objects
• This condition helps him work through his
depressive position
 Female Oedipal Development
• Little girls sees mother’s breast as good
and bad
• 6 months old – views breast as more
positive than negative
• Sees mother as full of good things and
wonders how babies are made
• Fantasizes father’s penis feeds mother
with good thing
 Female Oedipal Development
• Develops positive relationship with father’s
penis as bringer of good things
• Father will fill her with good things (babies)
• If Oedipal stage goes smoothly, girls
adopts a feminine position and has a
positive relationship with both parents
 Female Oedipal Development
• Other times, girl sees mother as a rival
• Fantasy of robbing mother of father’s
penis
• Fear of mother’s retaliation by injuring her
or taking away her babies (fear that inside
her she has been injured)
• This only is alleviated when she gives birth
to her own baby
 Female Oedipal Complex
• Penis envy stems from little girls wish to
internalize father’s penis and to receive babies
from him
• This fantasy precedes any desire for external
penis
• Against Freud, Klein did not find any evidence
that girls blame mother for bringing her into the
world without a penis
• Klein contends that girls maintain good relations
with mother through oedipal period
 Oedipal Complex
• Happy resolution is to have both mother
and father to come together and have sex
with each other (mother and father
fantasies)
• No remnant of rivalry remains
• Positive feelings towards both parents
enhance their adult sexual relations
Later Views on Object
Relations
 Margaret Mahler’s View
• Concerned with psychological birth of the
individual
• This takes place during first 3 years of life
• When child surrenders security for
autonomy
 Mahler
• Psychological birth begins during first
weeks of post-natal life and continues for
the next 3 years or so.
• Psychological Birth = child becomes a
separate individual from his primary
caregiver
• This accomplishment leads to ultimate
sense of identity
 Mahler’s View
• Three major development stages and four
substages
• First Stage: Normal Autism (birth – 3 to 4
weeks)
• Unhatched bird – able to satisfy nutritional
needs autistically (all nutrients are within
the shell)
• Baby – satisfies all nutritional needs
around the orbit of its mother
 Mahler’s Views
• Baby has feeling of omnipotence – nutrition
needs satisfied without any effort from self
• Period of absolute primary narcissism – infant is
not aware of any person
• Normal autism – objectless stage
• Baby naturally searches for mother’s breast
• Reject’s Klein’s notion of incorporating good
breast
 Mahler’s views
• Gradually baby realizes that they cannot
satisfy their own need
• Recognize primary caregiver and seek
symbiotic relationship with her
• This leads to normal symbiosis – Second
Stage
 Mahler’s Views
• Normal Symbiosis (begins around 4th or 5th
week of age and reaches zenith at 4th or
5th month
• Infants behaves and functions as though
he and his mother were an omnipotent
system – dual unity with one common
boundary
• Not a true symbiosis because mother is
not dependent on the child
 Mahler’s Views
• Symbiosis – characterized by a mutual
cuing of mother and baby
• Infant sends mother messages (cues) of
hunger, pleasure, pain, etc) mother
responds with feeding, holding, smiling,
etc.
• Baby can see mother’s face and perceives
pleasure or pain
• Mother and others are pre-objects
 Mahler’s Views
• Third Stage: Separation-Individuation (4ht
or 5th month to 30th – 36th month)
– Baby becomes psychologically separate from
mother,
– achieve a sense of individuation,
– begin feelings of personal identity
• No more dual unity – surrender feelings of
omnipotence and face vulnerability to
external world
 Mahler’s Views
• Separation-division stage is divided into 4
substages
– Differentiation
– Practicing
– Rapprochement
– Libidal Object Constancy
 Mahler’s Views
• Differentiation (5th month to 16th month)
• Bodily breaking away from mother-infant
symbiotic orbit
• Analogous to the hatching of the egg
• Baby smiles to mother – a bond with a specific
person
• Healthy babies – expand world beyond mother
and curiously inspect others people
• Unhealthy – fear strangers and recoil in fear
 Mahler’s Views
• Practicing Stage (7th to 10th month to 15th or 16th
month)
• Babies begin to move away from their mother
Distinguish their body from mother’s body,
establish special bond with mother, & develops
autonomous ego
• Early part – do not like losing sight of mother,
follow her with eyes, and feel distress when she
is away
• Walk and experience a fascinating and exciting
outside world
 Mahler’s View
• Rapprochement Stage (16th to 26th month)
• Desire to bring mother and self back together
again
• Babies want to share every new thing, skill,
experience with mother
• Experience separation anxiety with new freedom
• More aware of their separation, baby tries ploys
to regain dual unity, fails, frustrated so fights
with mother – rapprochement crisis
 Mahler’s Views
• Libidinal Object Constancy (3rd year of life)
• Child develops inner representation of
mother to tolerate being physically
separate from her
• If not, become dependent on mother’s
presence for security
• Aside from object constancy – child
consolidates their individuality – must
learn to function without their mother to
develop object relationships
 Mahler’s Views
• Elegant description based on empirical
observations
• Tenets are inferences made from non-
verbal infants but ideas extend to adults
• Any errors made in the first 3 years could
result in regression to a stage where
person has not achieved separation from
the mother, and thus personal identity
 Heinz Kohut’s view
• Emphasized the process by which the self
evolves from a vague and undifferentiated
image to a clear and precise sense of
individual identity
• Focused on early mother-child
relationships as key to understanding later
development
• Believed that human relatedness are the
core of human personality
 Heinz Kohut’s View
• Infants need adult caregivers – to gratify
physical need & to satisfy basic
psychological need
• In caring for needs of infants, adults
(selfobjects) treat infants as if they had a
sense of self – parents reacting with
warmth, coldness, or indifferences to
infant’s behavior
 Heinz Kohut’s View
• Through empathic interaction process,
infants understand selfobject’s responses
as pride, guilt, shame or envy
• All these attitudes eventually form building
blocks of the self
 Heinz Kohut’s View
• Self = the center of the individual’s
psychological universe
– Gives unity, and consistency to one’s
experience
– Remains relatively stable over time
– The center of initiative and
– Recipient of impressions
– Child’s focus of interpersonal relationships
(shapes how they will relate to parents and
other selfobjects)
 Heinz Kohut’s Theory
• Infants – naturally narcissistic, self-
centered, look out for own welfare, and
wish to be admired for who they are and
what they do
• Narcissistic Needs:
– Grandiose-exhibitionistic self
– Idealized parent image
 Heinz Kohut’s Views
• Grandiose-exhibitionistic self
• Infant relates to “mirroring” selfobject who
reflects approval of its behavior
• Infant forms rudimentary self-image from
messages such as “if others see me as
perfect, then I must be perfect”
 Heinz Kohut’s Views
• Idealized Parent Image
• This is opposed to grandiose self
• Implies that someone else is perfect
• However, it still satisfies a narcissistic
need – “you are perfect but I am a part of
you”
 Heinz Kohut’s Views
• Both narcissistic self-images – necessary
for healthy personality development
• This must change as child grows older
• Unaltered – pathological narcissistic adult
personality results
• Grandiosity must change into a realistic
view of self and idealized parent image
must grow into a realistic image of parents
 Heinz Kohut’s Views
• Two self-images should not disappear
completely to have a healthy positive
attitude towards self, and to see good
qualities in their parents
• However, a narcissistic adult does not
transcend infantile needs
• Continues to be self-centered and to see
the rest of the world as admiring audience
 Otto Kernberg’s View
• Worked with older patients – seriously
disturbed adults
• Lead him to formulate how healthy infants
develop and how mature adult
relationships evolve from childhood
experiences
• Regards his work as an extension of
Freudian psychoanalysis rather than an
alternate approach
 Otto Kernberg’s View
• The key to understanding personality
organization (extremely disturb to normal) is the
mother-child relationship
• Healthy early object relations results in:
integrated ego, a punishing superego, a stable
self-concept, and fulfilling interpersonal relations
• Unhealthy = contradictory ego states, and
various adult psychopathology results from
inadequate mother-child relations
 Otto Kernberg’s View
• In all levels of personality organization -
Internalized Object Relationships exists
• These object relationships are self-image,
object-image, and certain affect that colors the
self image
• Example in relating to mother, child may form
the image of “good me”, “good mother”, and a
strong positive affect
• Other times, “bad me”, “bad mother”, and strong
negative affect
 Otto Kernberg’s View
• Here the infant has contradictory aspects
of self
• Infant is able to separate these by splitting
the ego
• In adults – constant splitting would
represent a defect in the ego
• But splitting is sometimes a helpful
defense against anxiety
 Otto Kernberg’s View
• Split-off ego states has a link to the
defense mechanisms of introjection and
identification
• Introjection – most primitive level of
internalized object relationship
• The “swallowing whole” of the object, a
self-image and the affect
• The affect is generated by the interaction
of the object and the self
 Otto Kerberg’s View
• At early stage of development – introjected
images are undifferentiated and kept apart
by the splitting process
• This enables the child to keep separate
images of an object (good mother and bad
mother)
• The affect part of each object helps
synthesize images with similar feeling
tones (oral gratification, nurturance,
mother-child contact = one good internal
object
 Otto Kernberg’s view
• Second Level of internalized object relations -
Identification (a higher form of introjection)
• As babies mature cognitively, they see
themselves as and mother as having specific
social roles
• Role – the presence of a socially recognized
function that is being carried out by the object or
by both participants in the interaction
 Otto Kerberg’s View
• Mother helps dress a child
• Mother is interacting in a specific way with the
child as well as fulfilling a socially acceptable
role – role of a mother
• Child has specific self-image (subject) as a
dependent person who needs help getting
dressed, and image of the mother (object) as a
helper in getting dressed, and a specific affect
related with the interaction with mother during
the dressing situation
 Otto Kernberg’s View
• Various roles played by the child
eventually lead to a consistent pattern of
behavior
• This consistent pattern of behavior in turn
facilitates ego identity
• Ego Identity – the overall organization of
identifications and introjections under the
guiding principle of the synthetic function
of the ego
 Otto Kernberg’s View
• Ego Identity – gives a person a sense of
continuity of the self
• Established self identity – organizes other
self-images, allows a person to see object-
images more consistently, & facilitates a
stable interpersonal relationship
 Otto Kernberg’s View
• Ego identity
– highest level of organization of the self
– Leads to integrated ego development and
mature functioning super ego
• Lack of stable ego identity – split-off ego
continues, disintegration, and assortment
of psychological disorders
 Otto Kernberg’s View
• Kernberg applied this theory to groups and
organizations
• He believes that groups and organizations suffer
the same types of identity problems,
disintegration, and pathology
• He contends that psychiatric patients can
perform well in healthy groups, healthy
individuals will reveal pathology in sick groups –
important implications for therapy groups
 Otto Kernberg’s View
• Kernberg’s attempts to synthesize the Freudian
drive theory, object relations theory, and
developmental theory – accepted by clinicians
• Departure from Freud: sees people as being
shaped by their social experiences rather than
by instinctual drives
• Departure from Klein & Mahler: not based on
mother-child interaction thus less specific and
detailed
John Bowl’s Attachment Theory
• Integrated relations theory with
evolutionary perspective
• Attachment theory – starts at childhood
but continues to adulthood
• Attachments formed in childhood have
important impact on adulthood
• He argued that investigators should study
children directly rather than distorted
memories of adults
 Bowlby’s Attachment Theory
• Origins – observations of human and
primate infants
• Both go through a clear sequence of
reactions when separated from caregiver
• Bowlby observed three stages of
separation anxiety: Protest stage, Despair
stage, and Detachment stage
 Bowlby’s Attachment Theory
• Protest stage
– Infants become quiet, sad, passive, listless, and
apathetic
• Despair Stage
• Detachment Stage (unique to humans)
– Infants become detached from other people including the
caregiver (if mother returns – child ignores her or avoids
her)
– Detached children – no longer upset when mother leaves
– Older – interact with little emotions though appearing
sociable: Relations superficial and lack warmth
 Bowlby’s Attachment Theory
• Theory rests on two basic assumptions:
• Assumption 1:
• A responsive and accessible caregiver
must create a secure base for the child
• If this base is dependable – child develops
confidence and security better especially
in exploring the world
• Bonding relationship – critical function for
survival of infant and the species
 Bowlby’s Theory of Attachment
• Assumption 2:
• Bonding relationship becomes internalized
• Serves as a mental working model for future
relationships
• First relationship – most critical
• For bonding – infant cannot be just passive
• Attachment style is a relationship between two
people
• Both must be responsive to each other’s
behavior
 Bowler’s Attachment Theory
• Mary Ainsworth – developed a technique
for measuring the type of attachment style:
Strange Situation.
• 20-minute laboratory session – mother
and infant are alone, stranger enters,
interacts with infant, mother leaves twice
for 2 minutes, first time left with stranger,
second time left alone
• Critical behavior is when mother returns
 Bowlby’s Attachment Theory
• Three attachment styles: Secure, Anxious
Resistant, & Avoidant
• Secure Attachment
• When mother returns, infant is happy and
enthusiastic and initiates little contact
• Secure attached infants – confident in
accessibility to caregiver, there is security
and dependability – foundation for play
and exploration
 Bowlby’s Attachment Theory
• Anxious-Resistant Attachment Style
• Infants are ambivalent
• Mother leaves room, child becomes
unusually upset, when they return they
seek contact but reject attempts to be
soothed
• Infants give very conflicted messages
• Seek contact but also squirm to be put
down and throw away toys mother gives
 Bowlby’s Attachment Theory
• Anxious Avoidant Attachment Style
• Calm when mother leaves, they accept
stranger, when mother returns, ignores
and avoids mother.
• In both insecure attachments, infants lack
the ability to engage in effective play and
exploration.
 Psychotherapy
• All Object relations Theorists were
psychotherapists
• Each modified therapy to fit their
theoretical orientation
 Psychotherapy - Klein
• Pioneering with children
• Not accepted by other analysts in 1920’s
and 1930’s
• Anna Freud was especially not happy
about this because children could not
develop a transference to the therapist
because they have no conscious fantasies
or images thus not benefiting from
psychotherapy
 Klein’s Psychotherapy
• Klein believed both healthy and disturbed
children should be psychoanalyzed
(disturbed benefits through treatment,
healthy by analysis)
• Klein insisted that negative transference
was an essential step towards successful
treatment
 Klein’s Psychotherapy
• For negative transference and aggressive
fantasies: Klein gave variety of small toys,
pencil and paper, paint, crayons, and so
forth.
• She used play therapy as a substitute for
dream analysis and free association
• Children express their own conscious and
unconscious wishes through play
• In additions to expressing negative
transference through play, patients
attacked her verbally - analyzed
 Klein’s Psychotherapy
• Aim: To reduce depressive anxieties and
persecutory fears, and to mitigate the
harshness of internalized objects
• To do this, Klein encouraged her patients
to reexperience early emotions and
fantasies
• But this time the therapists points out
reality and fantasy, conscious and
unconscious
 Klein’s Psychotherapy
• Klein allowed parents to express both positive
and negative transference – situation necessary
for patient’s understanding of how unconscious
fantasies connect with present day situations
(sort of learning by experience)
• Once connection is made, patients feel less
persecuted by internal objects, reduced
depressive anxiety, and able to project internal
objects to outer world