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Object Relations Handout PDF

This document provides biographical information about Melanie Klein and summarizes some of her key contributions to object relations theory. It discusses Klein's life experiences and influences, as well as her views on the infant's earliest objects and drives, the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, and the development of the superego and id. The document also briefly summarizes the ideas of Margaret Mahler on separation-individuation and Mary Ainsworth's strange situation experiment.

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beyaya
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429 views

Object Relations Handout PDF

This document provides biographical information about Melanie Klein and summarizes some of her key contributions to object relations theory. It discusses Klein's life experiences and influences, as well as her views on the infant's earliest objects and drives, the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, and the development of the superego and id. The document also briefly summarizes the ideas of Margaret Mahler on separation-individuation and Mary Ainsworth's strange situation experiment.

Uploaded by

beyaya
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Melanie Reizes Klein

• Vienna, Austria
Object Relations Theory • Believed her birth was unplanned >>feelings
of rejection
• Early relationships: unhealthy & tragic
Melanie Klein – Cold, distant father; suffocating mother
– Older sister’s death>>>over attachment to
her younger brother>>>difficulties with men

Melanie Reizes Klein Object Relations


• Father’s death and marriage at • less biological, more interpersonal
21>>>hindered her from being a • Maternal drives over paternalistic views
physician • Human contact and relationships over
• Analyzed son, Erich (Freudian) sexual pleasure
• Melitta & Hans analyzed by other
analysts
• Never accepted by the Freuds
• Devoted analysis on children
#kleinvsfreud

Object: anything, anyone or any part of a person


through which an aim is satisfied The Infant
• 4-6 months of life
• Life vs death>>anxiety
• Phylogenetic Endowment
Object Aim
• Active fantasy life

Tension
Reduction • ***What is the first object we recognize
as infants?
#tensionreduction
Phantasies
• Psychic representations of
Id+unconscious
• An infant represents everything in two
ways: GOOD and BAD (alternating)
• Experiences are organized into
POSITIONS

#goodvsbad

Object
Id
=Aim

Internal External
Ego Superego
=drives =internal objects

Positions

Id Ego
– ignored – disorganized at birth
– Split: bad vs. good
– Unified upon resolution of positions
Superego Oedipus Complex
– Emerges earlier in life – Begins during early months
– Not due to Oedipus complex, it grows – Overlaps oral and anal stage
along and later becomes realistic guilt – Climaxes at the Genital Stage
– Much more harsh and cruel – Female and Male Oedipal Complex
– Early superego produces TERROR not
GUILT

Female Oedipal Complex Male Oedipal Complex


• 1st mos: mother’s breast as good & bad • mother’s breast as good & bad
• 6 mos: more positive • Oral desire for breast to father’s penis
– “How are babies made?” (feminine position)
• Penis as a baby-giver; father fills the girl • Homosexual feelings for
with babies father=heterosexual feelings for mother
• >>>fear of injury from mother
• Resolved: feminine position
#heterovshomo

Male Oedipal Complex Paranoid-Schizoid Position


• Wants to bite off father’s penis; • Persecutory vs. Ideal breast
castration anxiety • =fear of punishment, splitting of internal
• Sexual intercourse with mother is bad & external
• Resolved: hetero or masculine position • 3-4 months
• Subjective & fantastic
• Bad Vs. Good

#Splitting #Ivancase
Paranoid-Schizoid Position
• In adults: Ambivalence
• Adults become passive rather than
active objects:
– Others as perfect; self as worthless

***Splitting

#confusedfeelings

Depressive Position
• 5-6 months
• Maturation of the ego: toleration of Anxiety
Guilt over
destructive feelings over
destructive
• Good and bad can exist in a single possible
feelings
object. loss

#tolerance #whole

Depressive Position
• Reparation-amends
• Resolved by EMPATHY

#empathy #reunification
Introjection Projection Internalization
Taking in the good Throwing out the bad
• Taking in aspects of the external world
and organizing them into a meaningful
Defense framework
Mechanisms
Projective
Identification Splitting
Taking in the Good me & bad me
Good me & bad me
#everythinghasmeaning

Margaret Mahler Margaret Mahler


• Psychological birth (3 years): Separation-individuation (4-5 mos to 30-36 mos):
– Separation of the baby from mother • Differentiation (5-7 or 10 mos):
• Emphasis on 1st 36 months of life bodily breaking away
– Normal autism (3-4 weeks): unhatched egg • Practicing (7 or 10 mos-15/16 mos): can
separate, but must follow w/ the eyes
– Normal symbiosis (4-5 wks-4-5 mos): unity of
mother and child • Rapprochement (16-25 mos): separation anxiety
• Libidinal object constancy (3 yrs): develop inner
representation of mom

Mary Ainsworth
• The strange situation experiment

• Secure attachment-cries when mom leaves,


happy when she returns
• Anxious resistant-cries when mom leaves,
reject soothing
• Anxious avoidant-calm althroughout

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