Melanie Reizes Klein - Object Relations Theory

Object Relations Theory

[Objective Relations Theory]

• Offspring of Freud's instinct theory
• Differences :

             1) Place less emphasis on biologically based drives and more importance on consistent

                  patterns of interpersonal relationship

             2) Freud's paternalistic views (Power and the control of the father)

                  VS.  Klein's maternalistic views (Intimacy and the nurturing of the mother)

             3) Object Relation Theorists see human contact and relatedness - not sexual pleasure -

                  as the prime motive of human behavior

[Recalling Freud]

• Instincts or drives have an impetus, a source, an aim and an object
• Aim is to reduce tension : To achieve pleasure
• Objective of the drive is any person, part of a person, or thing through which the aim is satisfied
• Objective Relation theorists speculate on how the infant's real or fantasized early relation wish the mother or the breast become a model for all later interpersonal relationships

[Psychic Life of the Infant]

• Klein stressed the importance of the first 4-6 months

             - Infants do not being life with a blank slate

             - Inherited predisposition to reduce the anxiety they experience as a result of the conflict

               produced by the forces of the life instinct and the power of the death instinct

             - Innate readiness to act/react presupposes the existence of phylogenetic endownment

               (Unconscious inherited images that have been passed down to us through many generations

                of repetition)

[Phantasies]

• Psychic representations of unconscious id instinct
• Should not be confused with "Fantasies"
• Neonates could not put thought into words - they only possess the unconscious images of "Good" and "Bad"

             - Sucking fingers : Good breast

             - Infants who cry and kick their legs : Kicking/destroying the bad breast

• Unconscious phantasies connected with the breast continue to exact an impact on psychic life
• Later unconscious phantasies are shaped by both reality and inherited predispositions
• Oedipus complex : Child's wish to destroy the parent and sexually possess the other
• Phantasies are unconscious, they can be contradictory

             - Little boy can phantasies both beating his mother and having babies with her

[Objects]

• Humans have innate drives or instincts
• Drives must have some object

             - Hanger drive has the good breast as the object

             - Sex drives has a sexual organ as its object

• Children relate to these external objects, both in fantasy and reality
• Active fantasy, infants are more than internal thoughts about external objects, they are fantasies of internalizing the object in concrete and physical terms ('mother is inside my body')
• Objects have a power of their own, comparable to Freud's concept of a superego

[Positions]

• There is always a basic conflict between the life instinct and the dread instinct

             -That is, between good & bad, love & hate, creativity & destruction

• As the ego moves toward intergration and away from distintegration, infants naturally prefer gratifying sensations over frustrating ones
• To deal with this, infants organize their experiences into positions
• "Positions"  VS  "Storage of Development" : Positions alternate back and forth - not periods of times or phases of development
• Types :

             1) Paranoid-Schizoid position

             2) Depressive position

[Paranoid-Schizoid position]

• Infant comes into contact with the good and the bad breast
• Alternating experiences of gratification and frustration threaten the infant's ego
• To tolerate this, the ego splits itself, retaining parts of its life and death instincts while deflecting parts of both instincts onto the breast

             - To infant fears the persecutory breast

             - Has a relationship with the ideal breast - love, comfort, and gratification

                    - Infant desires to keep the ideal breast inside itself as a protection against annihilation

                      by persecutors

• Control the good breast and the fight off its persecutors, the infant adopts the paranoid schizoid position :

             - A way of organizing experience through:

                    1) Paranoid feeling of being persecuted

                    2) Splitting of internal and external objects into the good and the bad

• Develops during the first 3-4 months of life

             - The ego's perception of the external world is subjective and fantastic rather than objective

               and real

             - Persecutory feelings are paranoid

                    - They are not based on any real or immediate danger from the outside world

• Since babies can't that, they have the biological predisposition to :

             - Attach a positive values to nourishment and the life instinct

                    - Feelings of love and comfort are toward the good breast

             - Assign a negative value to hunger and the death instinct

                    - Range and destractive feelings are directed towards the bad breast

• Example :

             - Theory setting

             - Positive/Negative feelings toward loved ones

             - Positive object - "He's dangerous!" instead of "I'm aware that he is dangerous to me."

             - Protecting unconscious paranoid feelings onto others to avoid own destruction

             - See others as perfect while viewing themselves as empty or worthless

[Depressive position]

• Develops during the 5-6th month of life

             - View external objects as whole

             - Good and bad can exist in the same person

                    - Infants developed a realistic picture of the mother and recognizes that

                      she is an independent person can be both good and bad

• Ego is beginning to mature to the point at which it can tolerate some of its own destructive feelings rather that projecting them our world
• Infant realizes that the mother might go away and be lost forever

             - Fear of loss : Desires to protect her from the camibalistic toughts

             - Guilt : Infant is mature enough to realize that it lacks the capacity to protect mother

• Depressive Position :

             - Feelings of anxiety over loosing a loved object coupled with a sense of guilt for wanting

               to destroy that object

•   Love object and the hated object are now one and the same

             - Desire to make reparation

             - Empathy for mother (See her as whole and endangered)

• Realize that mother will not go away permenantly but will return after each departure
• When depressive position is resolved, children close the split between good and the bad mother
• Experience love from the mother and display own love for her
• Incomplete resolution can result in :

             - Lack of trust

             - Morbid mourning at the loss a loved one