CHAPTER 5
Klein: Object Relations Theory
Reporters:
Magsino, Leanne
Mangunay, Marilou
Moran, Rea
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MELANIE KLEIN BIOGRAPHY
Born: March 30, 1882 in Vienna, Austria
Died: September 22, 1960
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Parents:
○ Father: Dr. Moriz Reizes
■ A physician who struggled
to make a living
■ died when Melanie was 18
○ Mother: Libussa Deutsch Reizes
■ ran a shop selling plants
and reptiles
Siblings:
○ Emilie
■ the oldest and favored by
their father
○ Sidonie
■ 4 years older
■ died when Melanie was 4
years old (tuberculosis)
○ Emmanuel
■ 5 years older
■ died when Melanie was 20
(heart Attack)
Husband:
○ Arthur Klein
■ Her brother's bestfriend
3 Children:
○ Melitta
■ born in 1904
■ became a psychoanalyst
(Support Freud)
○ Hans
■ born in 1907
■ died from a fall in 1934
○ Erich
■ born in 1914
■ trained
according
to
Freudian Principle
1909
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○ They moved to Budapest
Sandro Ferenczi
○ introduced Klein to the world of
psychoanalysis
○ member of Freud circle
○ analyzed Melanie Klein
1914
○ Klein's mother died
○ Klein's youngest child Erich was
born
○ Klein discovered Freud and read
"On Dreams"
Karen Horney
○ Horney's two daughter where
analyzed by Klein
1919
○ Klein and her husband separated
○ established
a
psychoanalytic
practice in Berlin
Karl Abraham
○ member of Freud's inner circle
○ did analysis with Klein
○ After 14 month Abraham died
Ernest Jones
○ In 1926 he invited Klein to London
to analyze his children and deliver
a series of lecture on child analysis
The Psychoanalysis of Children
○ Klein's First Book (analysis with
Erich)
○ A result to her lectures in London
1927
○ Klein took up permanent residency
in England
1934
○ Klein's son, Hans, died in a fall
○ her daughter Melitta moved to
London
○ Melitta started an analysis with
Edward Glover
1946
○ The British Society accepted the
three training procedures:
The traditional one of Melanie Klein
The one advocated by Anna Freud
A middle group that accepted neither
training school but was more eclectic in its
approach.
INTRO TO OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY
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The infant’s drives (hunger, sex, and so
forth) are directed to an object—a
breast, a penis, a vagina, and so on.
Child’s relation to the breast is
fundamental and serves as a prototype
for later relations to whole objects, such
as mother and father.
Klein’s ideas tend to shift the focus of
psychoanalytic theory from organically
based stages of development to the role
of early fantasy in the formation of
consistent patterns of interpersonal
relationships.
3 GENERAL WAYS OF OBJECT RELATIONS
THEORY'S
DIFFERENCE
TO
INSTINCT
THEORY
1. Object relations theory places less
emphasis on biologically based drives and
more
importance
on
consistent
patterns of interpersonal relationships.
2. As opposed to Freud’s rather paternalistic
theory that emphasizes the power and
control of the father, object relations
theory tends to be more maternal,
stressing the intimacy and nurturing of
the mother.
3. Object relations theorists generally see
human contact and relatedness—not
sexual pleasure—as the prime motive of
human behavior.
Phylogenetic Endowment- inherited
unconscious images
PHANTASIES
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OBJECTS
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Psychic Life of the Infant
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Infants do not begin life with a blank slate
but with an 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.
The infant’s innate readiness to act or
react presupposes the existence of
phylogenetic endowment, a concept that
Freud also accepted.
One of Klein’s basic assumptions is that
the infant, even at birth, possesses an
active phantasy life. These phantasies are
psychic representations of
unconscious id instincts.
Dynamic phantasy life of infants
possesses unconscious images of
“good” and “bad.”
As the infant matures, unconscious
phantasies connected with the breast
continue to exert an impact on psychic life,
but newer ones emerge as well.
These later unconscious phantasies are
shaped by both reality and by inherited
predispositions. These phantasies are
unconscious
so,
they
can
be
contradictory.
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Early infancy children relate to these
external objects, both in fantasy and in
reality.
The earliest object relations are with the
mother’s breast, but “very soon interest
develops in the face and in the hands
which attend to his needs and gratify
them”.(Klein, 1991, p 757).
In their active fantasy, infants introject, or
take into their psychic structure, these
external objects, including their father’s
penis, their mother’s hands and face, and
other body parts.
Introjected objects are more than internal
thoughts about external objects; they are
fantasies of internalizing the object in
concrete and physical terms.
Klein’s notion of internal objects suggests
that these objects have a power of their
own.
POSITION (Developmental Stages)
● In their attempt to deal with this dichotomy
of good and bad feelings (life instinct and
death instinct), infants organize their
experiences into positions, or ways of
dealing with both internal and external
objects.
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Two Basic Position
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.
- It develops during the first 3 or 4 months
of life, during which time the ego’s
perception of the external world is
subjective and fantastic rather than
objective and real.
- At the same time the infant's innate
destructive urges create fantasies of
damaging the breast by biting, tearing, or
annihilating it.
- In order to tolerate both these feelings
toward the same object at the same time,
the ego itself, retaining parts of its life and
death instincts while deflecting parts of
both instincts onto the breast.
Persecutory breast - which provide frustrations
to an infant and are incapable of providing love,
care and comfort.
Ideal Breast - which provides love, comfort and
gratification.
Depressive Position
- The feelings of anxiety over losing a
loved object coupled with a sense of
guilt for wanting to destroy the objects.
- It begins to surface by the age of 5-6
months when the infant begins to view
external objects as whole and to see that
good and bad can exist in the same
person.
- The infant develops a more realistic
picture of the mother and recognizes that
she is an independent person who can be
both good and bad.
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The ego is beginning to mature to the point
at which it can tolerate some of its own
destructive feelings rather than projecting
them outward.
The infant also realizes that the mother
might go away and be lost forever. Fearing
the possible loss of the mother, the infant
desires to protect her and keep her from
the dangers of its own destructive forces,
those cannibalistic impulses that had
previously been projected onto her.
But the infant’s ego is mature enough to
realize that it lacks the capacity to protect
the mother, and thus the infant
experiences
guilt for its previous
destructive urges toward the mother.
The depressive position is resolved when
children fantasize that they have
reparation for their previous transgressions
and when they recognize that their mother
will not go away permanently but will
return after each departure.
Psych Defense Mechanism
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From very early infancy, children adopt
several psychic defense mechanisms to
protect their ego against the anxiety
aroused by their own destructive fantasies.
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Introjection
- Infants fantasize taking into their
body those perceptions and
experiences that they have had
with the external object originally
the mother’s breast.
Projection
- The fantasy that one’s own feelings
and impulses actually reside in
another person and not within
one’s body.
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Splitting
- Infants can only manage the good
and bad aspects of themselves and
external objects by splitting them,
that
is
by
keeping
incompatible impulses.
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apart
Projective Identification
- 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.
EVOLUTION OF EGO
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INTERNALIZATION
When object relations theorist speaks of
internalizations, they mean that the person takes
in (introjects) aspects of the external world and
then
organizes
it
into
a
'meaningful
psychological framework'.
In Kleinian theory, three important internalizations
are the ego, the superego, and the Oedipus
complex.
UNIFIED AND INTEGRATED EGO
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EGO (one’s sense of self)
Freud
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Hypothesized that ego exists at birth but
only
attributed
complex
psychic
functions until about the 3rd and 4th
year.
A young child is dominated by the id.
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Klein
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Reaches maturity at a much earlier stage
than Freud had assumed.
Ignored the Id. Based her theory on the
ego's ability to sense both destructive
and loving forces and managed them
through
splitting,
projection,
and
introjection.
Klein believed that although the ego is
mostly
unorganized
at
birth, it
nevertheless is strong enough to feel
anxiety, to use defense mechanisms,
and to form early object relations in
both phantasy and reality.
The ego begins to evolve with the infant's
first experience with feeding, when the
good breast provides milk, love and
security, however the bad breast does
not.
The infant's first object relation (the
breast) is the prototype not only for the
ego's future development but for the
individual’s
later
interpersonal
relations.
Before a unified ego can emerge, it must
first become split.
Klein argued that infants strive for
integration, but at the same time are also
faced with opposing forces of life and
death.
To avoid disintegration, the newly
emerging ego must split itself into the
good me and the bad me.
○ Good me - infants are enriched
with milk and love
○ Bad me - infants doesn’t received
milk and love
This dual image of self allows one to
balance and manage the good and bad
aspects of external objects.
As infants mature, their perceptions
become more realistic and their egos
become more integrated.
SUPEREGO (self-critical conscience)
Freud
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Klein
Conceptualized superego as consisting of
two subsystems:
○ ego-ideal
which
produces
inferiority feelings
○ conscience that results in guilt
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Klein’s picture of the superego differs from
Freud’s in at least three important
respects:
○ First, it emerges much earlier in
life;
○ Second, it is not an outgrowth of
the Oedipus complex;
○ Third, it is much more harsh and
cruel.
Early superego does not produce guilt
but terror.
It grows along with the Oedipal process
rather than being its product.
However, she will see her mother as a rival and
will fantasize about her father’s penis and stealing
her mother’s babies.
Penis envy - wish to internalize her father’s penis
and to receive a baby from him.
MALE OEDIPAL DEVELOPMENT
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OEDIPUS COMPLEX
1. It begins during the earliest month of life.
2. It is children's fear of retaliation from
their parents for their fantasy of emptying
the parent's body.
3. She stressed the importance of children
retaining positive feelings towards both
parents during oedipal years.
4. Oedipus Complex serves the same need
for both genders to establish a positive
attitude with good gratifying objects and
avoid bad terrifying objects.
FEMALE OEDIPAL DEVELOPMENT
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First, the little girl considered her mother's
breast as "good and bad".
At around sixth months, she views the
breast more positive than negative.
Then, she perceives her mother full of
good things which then leads her to
wonder how babies are made.
She fantasized that her father's penis fills
her mother's riches, including babies which
leads her to develop a positive
relationship with it, and fantasizes that
her father will fill her with babies.
A successful female Oedipal stage leads to her
adopting a “feminine” position and a positive
relationship with both parents.
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The boy views her mother's breast as
"good and bad".
During the early stages, his oral desire
shifts from her mother's breast to father's
penis and takes a 'feminine position',
developing a homosexual attitude
towards his father.
Next,
he
moves
to
develop
a
heterosexual relationship with his
mother.
As he matures, he develops impulse to
bite off his father's penis and murder
him and this feeling caused him to
develop a fear of retaliation from his
father.
The boy's Oedipus complex is partially resolved
by the castration anxiety.
Developing positive relationships
parents is essential for success.
with
both
Later Views on Object Relations
MARGARET MAHLER’S VIEW
● Children’s sense of identity rests on a
three-step relationship with their mother.
3 Major Developmental Stages
1. Normal Autism- Spans the period from
birth until about age 3 - 4 weeks. (the
analogy of unhitched bird and infant)
2. Normal symbiosis- As infants gradually
realize that they cannot satisfy their
own needs, they begin to recognize
their primary caregiver and to seek a
symbiotic relationship with her. Normal
symbiosis begins around the 4th or 5th
week of age but reaches its zenith during
the 4th or 5th month.
3. Separation- Individualization spans the
period from about the 4th or 5th month of
age until about the 30th to 36th month.
During this time, children become
psychologically separated from their
mothers,
achieve
a
sense
of
individuation, and begin to develop
feelings of personal identity.
Four Overlapping Substages
Process of Emphatic Interaction
Infant takes in the selfobjects responses as pride,
guilt, shame or envy-- all attitudes that eventually
form the building blocks of the self. Kohut (1977)
defined the self as “the center of the individual’s
psychological universe”
Kohut Believed That Infants
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Differentiation - Lasts from about the 5th
month until the 7th to 10th month of age
and is marked by a bodily breaking away
from the mother-infant symbiotic orbit. For
this reason, the differentiation substage is
analogous to the hatching of an egg.
Practicing substage - Period from about
the 7th to 10th month of age to about the
15th or 16th month. Children easily
distinguish their body from their
mother’s, establish a specific bond with
their mother, and begin to develop an
autonomous ego.
Rapprochement- From about 16 to 25
months of age, children desire to bring
their mother and themselves back
together,
both
physically
and
psychologically.
Libidinal
Object
ConstancyApproximates the 3rd year of life. During
this time, children must develop a
constant inner representation of their
mother so that they can tolerate being
physically separate from her.
HEINZ KOHUT’S VIEW
Infants require adult caregivers not only to gratify
physical needs but also to satisfy basic
psychological needs. In caring for both physical
and psychological needs, adults, or selfobjects,
treat infants as if they had a sense of self.
For example, parents will act with warmth,
coldness, or indifference depending in part on
their infant’s behavior
are naturally narcissistic
self-centered
looking out exclusively for their own
welfare and,
wishing to be admired for who they are
and what they do
The early self becomes crystallized around
two basic narcissistic needs:
(1) the need to exhibit the grandiose self=
established when an infant relates to a "mirroring"
selfobject who reflects approval of its behavior.
(2) the need to acquire an idealized image of one
or both parents= opposite of grandiose
Grandiose = "if everyone sees me as perfect then
I am perfect."
Idealized parent image = "You are perfect, but I
am part of you."
JOHN BOWLY’S ATTACHMENT THEORY
- Bowlby
firmly
believes
that
the
attachments formed during childhood have
an important impact on adulthood.
Because childhood attachments are
crucial to later development, Bowlby
argued that investigators should study
childhood directly and not rely on distorted
retrospective accounts from adults.
Three stages of Separation Anxiety
● Protest - when their caregiver is first out of
sight, infants will cry, resist soothing by
other people, and search for their
caregiver.
● Despair - As separation continues, infants
become quiet, sad, passive, listless, and
apathetic.
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Detachment - During this stage, infants
become emotionally detached from other
people, including their caregiver.
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Attachment and Loss - a trilogy on
Bowbly’s attachment theory
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Bowlby’s
theory
2
Fundamental
assumptions:
- A responsive and accessible
caregiver (usually the mother) must
create a secure base for the child.
- A bonding relationship (or lack
thereof) becomes internalized and
serves as a mental working model
on which future friendships and
love relationships are built.
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The aim of Kleinian therapy is to
● Reduce depressive anxieties;
● Persecutory fears and to mitigate the
harshness of internalized objects.
CONCEPT OF HUMANITY
Determinism vs Free Choice
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Psychotherapy
● Psychotherapy - Klein insisted that
negative transference was an essential
step toward successful treatment.
Either
pessimistic
or
optimisticdepending on the quality of the early
mother-infant relationship
Healthy
=
child
will
psychosocially healthy adult
grow
into
Unhealthy
=
child
will
acquire
pathological, self absorbed personality
3 ATTACHMENT STYLES RATINGS
Secure Attachment - when their mother
returns, infants are happy and enthusiastic
and initiate contact; for example they will
go over to their mother and want to be
held,
Anxious-resistant attachment - infants
are ambivalent. When their mother leaves
the room, they become unusually upset,
and when their mother returns they seek
contact with her but reject attempts at
being soothed,
Anxious-avoidant Attachment - with this
style, infants stay calm when their mother
leaves; they accept the stranger, and when
their mother returns, they ignore and avoid
her.
Determinism
Pessimistic vs Optimistic
Mary Ainsworth
● The strange Situation - is a technique for
measuring the type of attachment style
that exists between the caregiver and
infant.
●
Children are her main clients. To foster
negative transference, she used play
therapy as substitute to dream analysis
and free association,
Causality vs Teleology
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Causality Early experiences
primary shapers of personality.
are the
Conscious vs Unconscious
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Unconscious Prime determinants
behavior to very early infancy
of
Biological vs Social Influence
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Social Determinant because the intimacy
and nurturing that infants receive from
their
mother
are
environmental
experiences
Uniqueness vs Similarities
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Similarities limited their discussions to
the
distinction
between
healthy
personalities and pathological ones