UNIVERSITY OF CUENCA

FACULTY OF ECONOMIC AND ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES

UNIVERSITY OF CUENCA
ORGANIZATION THEORY

THEORY OF OBJECT RELATIONS ACCORDING TO "MELANIE

KLEIN"

COURSE:
CM 1-08

TEACHER:
RENÉ ESQUIVEL

ECUADOR BASIN
2012-2013

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THE THEORY OF OBJECT RELATIONS

INTRODUCTION

The theory of object relations is initiated in Great Britain by Melanie Klein, based on
Freud's theory of instincts, but she expanded psychoanalytic theory beyond the limits
established by Freud.
Klein describes the primitive relations between impulses and objects, internally
constructed; an extreme love and hate in relation to partial internal objects, good and
bad. But reading his works gives us an image of childhood development that is
strongly influenced by congenital tendencies and, to a large extent, independent of the
environment. For Klein, the past is a vehicle to understand the present and it is the
understanding of the present that liberates the patient. This is expressed in the fact
that the interpretation is aimed primarily at the current dynamic fantasy. Klein
highlighted the importance of the first four-six months after birth, insisting that the
child's impulses are oriented towards an object (hunger-breast). According to Klein,
the relationship between children and the breast is fundamental and serves as a
prototype for later relationships with complete objects (like the mother, in this
example). Children's early tendency to relate to partial objects gives their experiences
an unrealistic character that affects all their subsequent interpersonal relationships.
Therefore, Klein's theory tends to shift the focus of psychoanalytic theory from
developmental phases based on organic processes to the role of early fantasies in
interpersonal relationships.

BIOGRAPHY OF MELANIE KLEIN

(Vienna, 1882 - London, 1960) British psychoanalyst of

Austrian origin, pioneer of child analysis and the study of
psychoses. She was the last of the four children of Moriz Reizes
and Libusa Deutsch, both Hebrews, descendants of families of
rabbis. However, she was educated liberally, without religious
impositions.
At twenty-one she married an engineer, Arthur S. Klein, by
whom he had three children, which is why he had to interrupt
his medical studies. In Budapest, where she had moved in
1910 with her husband, she read Freud's The Interpretation of
Dreams, and the interest that this work aroused in her led her
to become the main founder of psychoanalysis.

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Melanie Klein knew how to observe and treat psychic phenomena hitherto ignored.
Ferenczi encouraged her to psychoanalyze children, but the research they undertook
together was not satisfactory.
At the Psychoanalysis Congress in The Hague he met K. Abraham, who sensed its
genius and chose it for a second analysis in Berlin, but Abraham died after only nine
months. In any case, the meeting was decisive for Melanie Klein, who always
considered herself a follower of his ideas. The rivalry with Anna Freud, who had also
begun to psychoanalyze children based on divergent premises, as well as the
continuous attacks that aroused both her discoveries and her strong personality, led
her to accept the invitation of her sympathizer, Jones, and in 1926 she joined.
established in London.
There the controversies continued, but the more open cultural environment allowed
him to have highly valuable students (H. Segal, H. Rosenfeld, R. Money-Kyrle, D.
Meltzer and others, known as the English School). Within a few decades the number of
his followers grew, especially in Europe and South America. He influenced original
thinkers such as W. Bion, F. Fornari, L. Grinberg and E. Jacques, not to mention most of
modern psychiatry.
After his first work, The development of a child (1923), he turned his attention to the
period of psychic life of early childhood, marked by the relationship between mother
and child. He developed the game technique to psychoanalyze children, but he also
radically influenced the theory and technique applied to adults: he reformulated the
Oedipus complex and highlighted the importance of aggressiveness and
destructiveness.

PSYCHICAL LIFE OF THE CHILD

Klein stressed the importance of the first four or six months of life. According to her,
at the beginning of their lives children are not a blank slate, but rather have an
inherited predisposition to reduce the anxiety they suffer as a result of the conflict
caused by the forces of the survival instinct and the power of the death instinct. The
child's innate disposition to act or react presupposes the existence of a phylogenetic
inheritance.

FANTASIES._

One of Klein's basic assumptions is that the child, even at birth, possesses an active
fantasy. Fantasies are psychic representations of unconscious instincts of the id, they
should not be confused with the conscious fantasies of older children and adults.
When Klein wrote about children's dynamic fantasy, he did not suggest that newborns
could express thoughts in words, he simply meant that they possess unconscious
images of "good and bad." For example, a full stomach is good, an empty stomach is
bad.
When the child matures, unconscious fantasies related to the breast continue to
influence his psychic life, but new ones also appear. These new unconscious fantasies
are shaped by reality and predispositions.
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inherited. One of them is related to the Oedipus complex, the desire of children to
destroy one of their parents and sexually possess the other. As these fantasies are
unconscious, they can be contradictory, for example, a small child may imagine that he
hits his mother and that he has children with her. These fantasies arise, in part, from
the child's experiences with his mother, and in part, from a universal predisposition to
destroy the bad breast and assimilate the good.

OBJECTS._

Humans have innate impulses or instincts, including the death instinct, impulses
obviously must have an object. Therefore, the impulse of hunger has as its object the
good breast, etc. Klein stated that from early childhood children relate to these
external objects, both in their fantasies and in reality. The first object relationships are
with the mother's breast, but “very soon an interest arises in the face and hands,
which attend to their needs and satisfy them” (Klein, 1991, p 757). In their active
fantasy, children introject or incorporate these external objects into their psychic
structure. Introjected objects are more than just internal ideas about external objects:
they are fantasies of the internalization of the object in concrete and physical terms,
for example, children who have introjected their mother believe that she is always
inside their own body. Klein's idea of internal objects suggests that they have power in
and of themselves, similar to Freud's concept of the superego, which assumes that
children carry within them the conscious of their father or mother.

ATTITUDES

SCHIZO-PARANOID ATTITUDE._

This position refers to the first 3 to 4 months of life; The self that is weak and
rudimentary is divided and the type of relationships that it establishes due to the
above will be with “good” or “bad” partial objects, a gratifying good breast and a bad
breast that threatens and is hated, so the Fantasies of this period are those of
persecution and unlimited gratification. The anxiety of this position is intense and
persecutory. In order to support these two feelings oriented towards the same object
simultaneously, the ego divides, preserving parts of the survival instinct and the death
instinct and diverting part of both instincts towards the chest (object). There is a
“good” or ideal breast in which the child's fantasy is of gratification, of being loved and
fed, and a “bad” or persecutory breast where the fantasy of deprivation and pain
dominates. To control the good breast and fight its persecutors, the child adopts what
Klein called the paranoid-schizoid attitude, a way of organizing experiences that
involves persecutory mania and the classification of internal and external objects into
good and bad.

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DEPRESSIVE ATTITUDE._

It covers approximately from 3 to 6 or 7 months, at which time for Melanie Klein it

enters the early stage of the Oedipus complex. The infant's ego is now more
integrated and its relationships occur with "bad" and "good" total objects, the anxiety
is less intense and the mechanisms are the same as in the previous position but more
attenuated and organized and the dominant anxiety is depressive, all this is because
the greater integration of the ego admits that the small child can better tolerate the
feeling of death within him, the ego begins to understand that the object of love is the
same as the object of hate. Mainly it begins to recognize its total object, it no longer
relates only to a breast, which is the mother. Klein now introduces ambivalence, now
it is combined that the mother can be good and bad, that she can be present and
absent, that she can love and hate her at the same time. . It also highlights that the self
becomes a total object, it is less divided into good or bad objects, this is how the bad
object and the ideal become closer. If in the paranoid schizoid position the
predominant anxiety occurs as long as it is experienced that the bad object annihilates
the ego, in the depressive position the anxiety is manifested by ambivalence and the
consequent fear of destroying that total and total object through its own destructive
impulses. beloved on whom he depends entirely, this dependence intensifies his need
to possess that object and at the same time to protect it from his inner aggressiveness.
The fear of damaging or destroying the loved object generates in the child a feeling of
guilt and consequently a tendency to repair it; the ego's attempts to inhibit its
aggressive impulses come into play. Let us focus on reparation as typical of this
position, because to the extent that the ego can restore its loved object, which it has
omnipotently destroyed in its fantasy, the consequent guilt and despair incite in the
child the desire to restore it in order to recover both internally as well as in external
experience. In the depressive position, the object is originally attacked in an
ambivalent way, but when the feeling of guilt and loss is intolerable, these manic
defenses come into play. In this case the repair is not carried out, thus deepening the
depressive anxiety. The Kleinian conceptualization indicates that if the child fails to
see the mother as a total object, he runs the risk of evolving into a psychosis; In the
opposite case, you will be able to overcome this state of destruction through the
depressive position.

With the theorization of the two positions we have armed the psychic apparatus
thought by Klein, precisely his analytical technique focuses on the interpretation of
unconscious fantasies and the defense mechanisms that are implemented to avoid
anxiety and in the same way in the work of the elaboration of the anxieties of the
paranoid schizoid and depressive positions.

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PSYCHIC DEFENSE MECHANISMS

INTROJECTION._

It means that children imagine that they have within their body the perceptions and
experiences that they have had with the external object, such as with the mother's
breast, for example. This begins when there is an attempt to incorporate the mother's
breast into the child's body. Generally, the child tries to introject good objects, to have
them inside as a form of protection against anxiety, although the child also introjects
bad objects, such as the bad breast, to have control over them. These introjected
objects are not exact representations of real objects, but are influenced by children's
fantasies.

PROJECTION._

Just as children use introjection to incorporate bad and good elements, they use
projection to free themselves from them. Projection is the fantasy that the feelings and
impulses of reality reside in another person and not within us. By projecting difficult-
to-control destructive impulses onto external objects, children relieve the unbearable
anxiety that comes with the thought of being destroyed. Projection allows you to
believe that your subjective opinions are true.

DIVISION._

Children can control the good and bad aspects of themselves and external objects by
dividing them, that is, separating incompatible impulses. To separate bad objects from
good ones, one's ego must be divided. Children create an image of the “good self” and
the “bad self” that allows them to manage pleasant and destructive impulses directed
at external objects. It allows individuals to obtain the positive and negative aspects of
themselves, analyze whether their behavior is good or bad.

PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION._

Another way to reduce anxiety is projective identification, a psychic defense

mechanism in which children separate unacceptable parts of themselves, project them
onto the object, and finally introject them into themselves in a modified or distorted
form. . Projective identification has a strong influence on the interpersonal
relationships of adults. In contrast to projection, which can exist entirely in fantasy,
projective identification exists only in the world of real interpersonal relationships.

INTERNALIZATIONS

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THE EGO._

Although the ego at birth is very disorganized, it is strong enough to feel anxiety, use
defense mechanisms, and create early object relationships both in imagination and in
reality. The ego begins to evolve with the child's first experience with his mother's
breast, when it provides him not only with food but also with love and security, in the
same way with the experience of the bad breast, which refuses to provide food and
give love and security. As children mature their egos become more integrated.

THE SUPEREGO._

Young children fear being eaten and cut into pieces, fears totally out of proportion to
any real danger. Klein suggested that the answer lies in children's own destruction
instincts, which they experience as anxiety, and to cope with them, the child's ego
immobilizes the survival instinct against the death instinct. By the fifth or sixth year of
life, the superego generates little anxiety but a lot of guilt, has lost much of its severity
and has transformed into a realistic consciousness.

THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX._

It is related to children's desire to destroy one of their parents and sexually possess
the other. Since these fantasies are unconscious, they can be contradictory. In this
way, children of both genders can direct their love alternatively or simultaneously
towards each of their parents, thus being able to maintain homosexual or
heterosexual relationships with them.

FEMALE OEDIPAL DEVELOPMENT._

At the beginning of female oedipal development, during the first months of life, the
little girl considers her mother's breast as “good” and “bad.” Later, around six months
of age, he begins to consider the breast as something more positive than negative and,
later, consider the breast as something more positive. However, the girl will perceive
her mother as a rival.

MALE OEDIPAL DEVELOPMENT._

The small child considers his mother's breast as something good and bad. Later,
during the first months of Oedipal development, the child shifts some of his oral
desires from his mother's breast to his father's penis. At this point, the little boy has
adopted a passive homosexual attitude toward his father. The boy

He develops oral-sadistic attitudes towards his father's penis and wishes to destroy it
but fears that his father will take revenge on him.

LATER PERSPECTIVES OF THE THEORY OF OBJECT RELATIONS.

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PERSPECTIVE OF MARGARETH MAHLER._

The psychological birth of the individual begins during the first weeks of life and
continues for approximately the next three years. By the term psychological birth,
Mahler meant that children become individuals independent of their primary
caregiver, an achievement that ultimately provides them with a sense of identity.

HEINZKOHUT PERSPECTIVE._

Children require adult caregivers not only to meet their physical needs but also to
meet their basic psychological needs. By attending to physical and psychological
needs, adults, or ego objects, treat children as if they had a notion of their own self.

THEORY OF ATTACHMENT BY JOHN BOWLBY._

In 1944, Bowlby, based on the biographies of 44 juvenile thieves, carried out a

retrospective study whose results led him to affirm that altered early relationships
constitute an important factor in the genesis of mental illness. He conducted research
on the consequences that institutionalization has on the psychological development of
children (Bowlby, 1951). Attachment theory is also based on psychoanalytic ideas; He
took childhood as a starting point and extrapolated his conclusions into adulthood,
asserting that the emotional bonds created during childhood have important
repercussions in adulthood.

MARY AINSWORTH AND THE STRANGE SITUATION._

He developed the technique to measure the type of attachment that exists between
the caregiver and the child, known as the strange situation. Based on Bowlby's
attachment theory, three types of attachment are distinguished: secure attachment,
anxious-ambivalent attachment, and anxious-avoidant attachment.

PSYCHOTHERAPY

Klein focused on analyzing the psychic attitudes of children, although she was not well
regarded in the 1920s and 1930s because many considered the invalidity of her
theory. Melanie Klein gave her patients sheets of paper, pencils, paints, etc. for

analyze the children's fantasies, some children even insulted her, and that made it
easier for her to interpret the reasons that led to these behaviors. The main objective
of Kleinian theory is to reduce depressive anxieties, persecutory manias and appease
the severity of internalized objects. After the therapy, patients felt less persecuted by
internalized objects, less depressive anxiety, and could project internalized objects
that previously seemed terrifying to the outside.

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RELATED RESEARCH

OBJECT RELATIONS AND EATING DISORDERS._

The researchers took three measures of object relations and three measures of eating
disorders from the participants to see if there was a connection between the two.

The researchers used three measures of Object relations:

1. Interpersonal dependency
2. Separation-Individualization
3. A general measure that assessed distancing, insecure attachment, selfishness,
and social incompetence.

The three eating disorder measures were:

1. Anorexic tendencies
2. Bulimic tendencies
3. The person's sense of control and self-efficacy of compulsive eating.
The results showed differences between genders in one of the measures of object
relations. Regarding eating disorder measures, men had lower scores than women on
all three disorder measures.

THE THEORY OF ATTACHMENT AND RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ADULTS._

Gives a lot of importance to the relationship between parents and children. Since the
1980s, however, researchers began to systematically study effective bonds between
adults, especially in romantic relationships.

Furthermore, the researchers found that adults with secure attachments tended to
believe that love can last more than adults with insecure attachments and were less
skeptical about love in general.

longer relationships and less likelihood of divorce than anxious-avoidant or anxious-

ambivalent adults.

KEY CONCEPTS

 Object relations theories assume that the mother-child relationship during the
first four or five months is the most important period for personality
development.

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 Klein claimed that an important part of every relationship is the internal

psychic representations of the first significant objects, such as the mother's
breast or the father's penis.
 Children introject these psychic representations into their own psychic
structure and then project them onto an external object, that is, another
person. These internal images are not exact representations of another person
but rather remnants of previous interpersonal experiences.
 The ego, which exists from birth, can perceive destructive and affective forces,
that is, a rewarding breast and a frustrating breast.
 To cope with the nurturing breast and the frustrating breast, children divide
these objects into good and bad and also divide their own ego, creating a dual
image of themselves.
 Klein stated that the Super Ego appeared much earlier than Freud proposed
and that it grows parallel to the Oedipal process, instead of being a product of
it.
 At the beginning of the female oedipal phase, the little girl adopts a feminine
attitude toward both parents. She has positive feelings toward her mother's
breast and her father's penis, which she believes will fill her with babies.
 Sometimes the girl develops a certain hostility towards her mother who she
fears will take revenge on her and steal her babies.
 In most girls, however, the female Oedipus complex resolves without
antagonism or jealousy toward the mother.
 The young child also adopts a feminine attitude during the early years of the
oedipal phase. In this period he is not afraid of castration as punishment for the
sexual attraction he feels for his mother.
 Later, the child projects his destructive impulses onto the father, whom he
fears will bite him or castrate him.
 The male oedipus complex is resolved when the child establishes positive
relationships with both parents and accepts that they have sexual relations
with each other.

GLOSSARY:

Antagonism: It is defined as contradiction, rivalry and opposition, especially in

doctrines and opinions. It also refers to the interaction between organisms or
substances that causes the loss of activity of one of them.

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Oedipus._ Expression consecrated by S. Freud to designate that in the child there is a

desire to possess the mother and at the same time a hatred towards the father that is
compensated by the opposite tendency of identification with him.

Introjection is a psychological process by which traits, behaviors or other fragments

of the world around us become our own, especially the personality of other subjects.
Identification , incorporation and internalization are related terms.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

 Book of Personality Theories by Jess Feist and Gregory J. Feist. (Sixth Edition,
pages: 133-158)

 http://www.psicoterapiarelacional.es/portals/0/Documentacion/Espagna/
CRSutil_V4N2_Anticartesiano.pdf

 http://www2.kennedy.edu.ar/departamentos/psicoanalisis/articulos/
conceptos_teo.pdf

 http://www.aperturas.org/articulos.php?id=0000539&a=-Teoria-del-apego-y-
psicoanalisis

 http://es.scribd.com/doc/88211883/Klein

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