Object relations theory

Object relations theory is a school of thought in psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalysis centered around theories of stages of ego development. Its concerns include the relation of the psyche to others in childhood and the exploration of relationships between external people, as well as internal images and the relations found in them. Adherents to this school of thought maintain that the infant's relationship with the mother primarily determines the formation of their personality in adult life. Attachment is the bedrock of the development of the self, i.e. the psychic organization that creates one's sense of identity.

Theory

While its groundwork derives from theories of development of the ego in Freudian psychodynamics, object relations theory does not place emphasis on the role of biological drives in the formation of personality in adulthood.
The first "object" in an individual's psyche is usually an internalized image of the mother. Internal objects are formed by the patterns in one's experience of being taken care of as an infant, which may or may not be accurate representations of the actual, external caretakers. Objects are usually internalized images of one's mother, father, or other primary caregiver. However, they can also consist of parts of a person, such as an infant relating to the breast rather than to their mother as a whole person.
Later experiences can reshape these early patterns, but objects often continue to exert a strong influence throughout life. Objects are initially comprehended in the infant mind by their functions and are termed part objects. The breast that feeds the hungry infant is the "good breast," while a hungry infant that finds no breast understands the breast to be the "bad breast." With a "good enough" facilitating environment, part object functions eventually transform into a comprehension of whole objects. This corresponds with the ability to tolerate ambiguity, to see that both the "good" and the "bad" breast are a part of the same mother figure.

History

The initial line of thought emerged in 1917 with Sándor Ferenczi. Subsequently, early in the 1930s, Harry Stack Sullivan, established what is known as interpersonal theory. British psychologists Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, and Harry Guntrip extended object relations theory during the 1940s and 1950s. In 1952, Ronald Fairbairn formulated his theory of object relations.
The term has been used in many different contexts, which led to different connotations and denotations. While Fairbairn popularized the term "object relations," Klein's work tends to be most commonly identified with the terms "object relations theory" and "British object relations," at least in contemporary North America, though the influence of the British Independent Group—which argued that the primary motivation of the child is object seeking rather than drive gratification—is becoming increasingly recognized.
Klein felt that the psychodynamic battleground that Freud proposed occurs very early in life, during infancy. Furthermore, its origins are different from those that Freud proposed. The interactions between infant and mother are so deep and intense that they form the focus of the infant's structure of drives. Some of these interactions provoke anger and frustration; others provoke strong feelings of dependence as the child begins to recognize that the mother is more than a breast from which to feed. These reactions threaten to overwhelm the infant's sense of self. The way in which the infant resolves the conflict, Klein believed, is reflected in the adult's personality.
Within the London psychoanalytic community, a conflict of loyalties took place between Klein and object relations theory and Anna Freud and ego psychology. In London, those who refused to choose sides were termed the "middle school," whose members included Winnicott and Michael Balint. Klein's theories became popular in South America, while Anna Freud's garnered an American allegiance. Anna Freud was particularly influential in American psychoanalysis in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. American ego psychology was furthered in the works of Hartmann, Kris, Loewenstein, Rapaport, Erikson, Jacobson, and Mahler.

Fairbairn's theory of attachment

Fairbairn described how people who were abused as children internalize that experience. The "moral defense" is the tendency seen in survivors of abuse to take all the bad upon themselves, each yielding the moral evil so the caretaker-object can be regarded as good. This is a use of splitting as a defense to maintain an attachment relationship in an unsafe world. In one particular example of this circumstance, Fairbairn introduced a four-year-old girl who had suffered a broken arm at the hands of her mother to a doctor friend of his, who told the little girl that they were going to find her a new parent. The girl, now panicked and unhappy, replied that she wanted her "real mommy." Fairbairn asked, "You mean the mommy that broke your arm?" "I was bad," the girl replied.
Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst David E. Scharff has written extensively on Fairbairn's work, including editorial and theoretical contributions to understanding and applying Fairbairn's object relations model in clinical practice. His collaborations with Fairbairn’s daughter, Ellinor Fairbairn Birtles, have further informed his interpretation of Fairbairn's legacy.

Kleinian object relations theory

Unconscious phantasy

Klein termed the psychological aspect of instinct unconscious phantasy. Phantasy is a given of psychic life which moves outward towards the world. These image-potentials are given a priority with the drives and eventually allow the development of more complex states of mental life. Unconscious phantasy in the infant's emerging mental life is modified by the environment as the infant has contact with reality.

From the moment the infant starts interacting with the outer world, he is engaged in testing his phantasies in a reality setting. I want to suggest that the origin of thought lies in this process of testing phantasy against reality; that is, that thought is not only contrasted with phantasy, but based on it and derived from it.

The role of unconscious phantasy is essential in the development of a capacity for thinking. In Bion's terms, the phantasy image is a preconception that will not be a thought until experience combines with a realization in the world of experience. The preconception and realization combine to take form as a concept that can be thought. The classic example of this is the infant's observed rooting for the nipple in the first hours of life. The instinctual rooting is the preconception. The provision of the nipple provides the realization in the world of experience, and through time, with repeated experience, the preconception and realization combined to create the concept. Mental capacity builds upon previous experience as the environment and infant interact.

The first bodily experiences begin to build up the first memories, and external realities are progressively woven into the texture of phantasy. Before long, the child's phantasies are able to draw upon plastic images as well as sensations—visual, auditory, kinæsthetic, touch, taste, smell images, etc. And these plastic images and dramatic representations of phantasy are progressively elaborated along with articulated perceptions of the external world.

Projective identification

As a specific term, projective identification is introduced by Klein in "Notes on some schizoid mechanisms."

helps the ego to overcome anxiety by ridding it of danger and badness. Introjection of the good object is also used by the ego as a defense against anxiety.... The processes of splitting off parts of the self and projecting them into objects are thus of vital importance for normal development as well as for abnormal object-relation. The effect of introjection on object relations is equally important. The introjection of the good object, first of all the mother's breast, is a precondition for normal development... It comes to form a focal point in the ego and makes for cohesiveness of the ego.... I suggest for these processes the term 'projective identification'.

Ogden identifies four functions that projective identification may serve. As in the traditional Kleinian model, it serves as a defense. Projective identification serves as a mode of communication. It is a form of object relations, and "a pathway for psychological change." As a form of object relationship, projective identification is a way of relating with others who are not seen as entirely separate from the individual. Instead, this relating takes place "between the stage of the subjective object and that of true object relatedness".

Paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions

In contrast to Fairbairn and later Guntrip, Klein believed that both good and bad objects are introjected by the infant, the internalization of good objects being essential to the development of healthy ego function. Klein conceptualized the depressive position as "the most mature form of psychological organization", which continues to develop throughout the life span.
The depressive position occurs during the second quarter of the first year. Prior to that the infant is in the paranoid-schizoid position, which is characterized by persecutory anxieties and the mechanisms of splitting, projection, introjection, and omnipotence—which includes idealizing and denial—to defend against these anxieties.

Paranoid-schizoid position

The paranoid-schizoid position is characterized by part object relationships. Part objects are a function of splitting, which takes place in phantasy. At this developmental stage, experience can only be perceived as all good or all bad. As part objects, it is the function that is identified by the experiencing self, rather than whole and autonomous others. The hungry infant desires the good breast who feeds it. Should that breast appear, it is the good breast. If the breast does not appear, the hungry and now frustrated infant, in its distress, has destructive phantasies dominated by oral aggression towards the bad, hallucinated breast.
Klein notes that in splitting the object, the ego is also split.
The anxieties of the paranoid schizoid position are of a persecutory nature, fear of the ego's annihilation. Splitting allows good to stay separate from bad. Projection is an attempt to eject the bad in order to control through omnipotent mastery. Splitting is never fully effective, according to Klein, as the ego tends towards integration.