Chapter 5 Klein: Object Relations Theory

Chapter 5
Klein: Object Relations Theory

Learning Objectives

After reading Chapter 5, you should be able to:

1. Define object relations theory and compare it to Freudian theory.

2. Discuss the psychological life of the infant as seen from Klein's

point of view.

3. Explain Klein's concepts of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive

positions.

4. List and discuss Klein's psychic defense mechanisms.

5. Compare and contrast Klein's concept of the Oedipus complex

with that of Freud.

6. Discuss Mahler's ideas on psychological birth.

7. Discuss Kohut's views of object relations.

8. Discuss Bowlby's attachment theory.

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 Chapter 5 Klein: Object Relations Theory

9. Discuss Ainsworth's Strange Situation.

Summary Outline

I. Overview of Object Relations Theory

Many personality theorists have accepted some of Freud's basic
assumptions while rejecting others. One approach to extending
psychodynamic theory has been the object relations theories of
Melanie Klein and others. Unlike Jung and Adler who came to
reject Freud's ideas, Klein tried to validate Freud's theories. In
essence, Klein extended Freud's developmental stages downward
to the first 4 to 6 months after birth.
II. Biography of Melanie Klein
Melanie Klein was born in Vienna in 1892, the youngest of four
children. She had neither a PhD nor an MD degree but became
an analyst by being psychoanalyzed. As an analyst, she
specialized in working with young children. In 1927, she moved
to London where she practiced until her death in 1960.
III. Introduction to Object Relations Theory
Object relations theory differs from Freudian theory in three
important ways: (1) it places more emphasis on interpersonal
relationships, (2) it stresses the infant's relationship with the
mother rather than the father, and (3) it suggests that people are
motivated primarily for human contact rather than for sexual
pleasure. The term object in object relations theory refers to any

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 Chapter 5 Klein: Object Relations Theory

person or part of a person that infants introject, or take into their

psychic structure and then later project onto other people.
IV. Psychic Life of the Infant
Klein believed that infants begin life with an inherited
predisposition to reduce the anxiety that they experience as a
consequence of the clash between the life instinct and the death
instinct.
A. Fantasies
Klein assumed that very young infants possess an active,
unconscious fantasy life. Their most basic fantasies are images of
the "good" breast and the "bad" breast.
B. Objects
Klein agreed with Freud that drives have an object, but she was
more likely to emphasize the child's relationship with these
objects (parents' face, hands, breast, penis, etc.), which she saw
as having a life of their own within the child's fantasy world.
V. Positions
In their attempts to reduce the conflict produced by good and bad
images, infants organize their experience into positions, or ways
of dealing with both internal and external objects.
A. Paranoid-Schizoid Position
The struggles that infants experience with the good breast and the
bad breast lead to two separate and opposing feelings—a desire
to harbor the breast and a desire to bite or destroy it. To tolerate
these two feelings, the ego splits itself by retaining parts of its life
and death instincts while projecting other parts onto the breast. It

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 Chapter 5 Klein: Object Relations Theory

then has a relationship with the ideal breast and the persecutory
breast. To control this situation, infants adopt the paranoid-
schizoid position, which is a tendency to see the world as having
both destructive and omnipotent qualities.
B. Depressive Position
By depressive position, Klein meant the anxiety that infants
experience around 6 months of age over losing their mother and
yet, at the same time, wanting to destroy her. The depressive
position is resolved when infants fantasize that they have made
up for their previous transgressions against their mother and also
realize that their mother will not abandon them.
VI. Psychic Defense Mechanisms
According to Klein, children adopt various psychic defense
mechanisms to protect their egos against anxiety aroused by their
own destructive fantasies.
A. Introjection
Klein defined introjection as the fantasy of taking into one's own
body the images that one has of an external object, especially the
mother's breast. Infants usually introject good objects as a
protection against anxiety, but they also introject bad objects in
order to gain control of them.
B. Projection
The fantasy that one's own feelings and impulses reside within
another person is called projection. Children project both good
and bad images, especially onto their parents.
C. Splitting

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 Chapter 5 Klein: Object Relations Theory

Infants tolerate good and bad aspects of themselves and of

external objects by splitting, or mentally keeping apart,
incompatible images. Splitting can be beneficial to both children
and adults, because it allows them to like themselves while still
recognizing some unlikable qualities.
D. Projective Identification
Projective identification is the psychic defense mechanism
whereby infants split off unacceptable parts of themselves,
project them onto another object, and finally introject them in an
altered form.
VII. Internalizations
After introjecting external objects, infants organize them into a
psychologically meaningful framework, a process that Klein
called internalization.
A. Ego
Internalizations are aided by the early ego's ability to feel
anxiety, to use defense mechanisms, and to form object relations
in both fantasy and reality. However, a unified ego emerges only
after first splitting itself into the two parts—those that deal with
the life instinct and those that relate to the death instinct.
B. Superego
Klein believed that the superego emerged much earlier than
Freud had held. To her, the superego preceded rather than
followed the Oedipus complex. Klein also saw the superego as
being quite harsh and cruel.
C. Oedipus Complex

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 Chapter 5 Klein: Object Relations Theory

Klein believed that the Oedipus complex begins during the first
few months of life, then reaches its zenith during the genital
stage, at about 3 or 4 years of age—the same time that Freud had
suggested it began. Klein also believed that much of the Oedipus
complex is based on children's fear that their parents will seek
revenge against them for their fantasy of emptying the parent's
body. For healthy development during the Oedipal years,
children should retain positive feelings for each parent.
According to Klein, the little boy adopts a "feminine"
position very early in life and has no fear of being castrated as
punishment for his sexual feelings toward his mother. Later, he
projects his destructive drive onto his father, whom he fears will
bite or castrate him. The male Oedipus complex is resolved
when the boy establishes good relations with both parents.
The little girl also adopts a "feminine" position toward both
parents quite early in life. She has a positive feeling for both her
mother's breast and her father's penis, which she believes will
feed her with babies. Sometimes the girl develops hostility
toward her mother, whom she fears will retaliate against her and
rob her of her babies, but in most cases, the female Oedipus
complex is resolved without any jealousy toward the mother.
VIII. Later Views of Object Relations
A number of other theorists have expanded and altered Klein's
theory of object relations. Notable among them are Margaret
Mahler, Heinz Kohut, John Bowlby. and Mary Ainsworth.
A. Margaret Mahler's View

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 Chapter 5 Klein: Object Relations Theory

Mahler, a native of Hungary who practiced psychoanalysis in

both Vienna and New York, developed her theory of object
relations from careful observations of infants as they bonded with
their mothers during their first 3 years of life. In their progress
toward achieving a sense of identity, children pass through a
series of three major developmental stages. First is normal
autism, which covers the first 3 to 4 weeks of life, a time when
infants satisfy their needs within the all-powerful protective orbit
of their mother's care. Second is normal symbiosis, when
infants behave as if they and their mother were an omnipotent,
symbiotic unit. Third is separation-individuation, from about 4
months until about 3 years, a time when children are becoming
psychologically separated from their mothers and achieving
individuation, or a sense of personal identity.
B. Heinz Kohut's View
Kohut was a native of Vienna who spent most of his professional
life in the United States. More than any of the other object
relations theorists, Kohut emphasized the development of the
self. In caring for their physical and psychological needs, adults
treat infants as if they had a sense of self. The parents' behaviors
and attitudes eventually help children form a sense of self that
gives unity and consistency to their experiences.
C. John Bowlby's Attachment Theory
Bowlby, a native of England, received training in child
psychiatry from Melanie Klein. By studying human and other
primate infants, Bowlby observed three stages of separation

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 Chapter 5 Klein: Object Relations Theory

anxiety: (1) protest, (2) apathy and despair, and (3) emotional
detachment from people, including the primary caregiver.
Children who reach the third stage of separation anxiety lack
warmth and emotion in their later relationships.
D. Mary Ainsworth and the Strange Situation
Mary Ainsworth was born in Ohio in 1919 and died in 1999. She
and her colleagues developed a technique called the Strange
Situation for measuring one of three the types of attachment
styles—secure attachment, anxious-resistant attachment, and
anxious-avoidant attachment.
IX. Psychotherapy
The goal of Klein's therapy was to reduce depressive anxieties
and persecutory fears and to lessen the harshness of internalized
objects. To do this, Klein encouraged patients to reexperience
early fantasies and pointed out the differences between conscious
and unconscious wishes.
X. Related Research
Research on object relations has included a variety of topics,
including eating disorders and adult relationships. One study of
both topics was conducted by Smolak and Levine (1993) who
found that bulimia was associated with detachment from parents,
whereas anorexia was associated with high levels of guilt and
conflict over separation from parents. More recently, Steven
Huprich and colleges (Huprich, Stepp, Graham, & Johnson, 2004)
found that both men and women who were insecurely attached
and self-focused (egocentric) had greater difficulty in controlling

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 Chapter 5 Klein: Object Relations Theory

their compulsive eating than did those who were more securely
attached and less self-focused. Attachment theory was originally
conceptualized by John Bowlby, who emphasized the relationship
between parent and child. Since the 1980s, researchers have
begun to examine systematically the attachment relationships in
adults, especially in romantic relationships. The usefulness of
attachment theory was investigated in a classic study by Cindy
Hazan and Phil Shaver (1987). These researchers found that
people with secure early attachments experienced more trust,
closeness, and positive emotions in their adult love relationships
than did other people. Steven Rholes and colleagues found that as
they predicted, avoidant individuals do not seek out additional
information about their romantic partners’ intimate feelings and
dreams, and anxious individuals seek more information about
their partners’ intimacy-related issues and goals for the future
(Rholes, Simpson, Tran, Martin, & Friedman, 2007). Rivka
Davidovitz and others also examined attachment style in leader-
follower relationships, specifically military officers and their
soldiers (Davidovitz, Mikulincer, Shaver, Izsak, & Popper, 2007;
Popper & Mayseless, 2003). They found units with officers who
had an avoidant attachment style to be less cohesive, and their
soldiers reported lower psychological well-being than members of
other units. Anxiously attached officers’ units rated low on
instrumental functioning, but high on socioemotional functioning.
Recent research shows that attachment theory is important to
understanding a wide range of adult relationships.

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 Chapter 5 Klein: Object Relations Theory

XI. Critique of Object Relations Theory

Object relations theory shares with Freudian theory an inability to
be either falsified or verified through empirical research.
Nevertheless, some clinicians regard the theory as being a useful
guide to action and as possessing substantial internal consistency.
However, the theory must be rated low on parsimony and also
low on its ability to organize knowledge and to generate research.
XII. Concept of Humanity
Object relations theorists see personality as being a product of the
early mother-child relationship, and thus they stress determinism
over free choice. The powerful influence of early childhood also
gives these theories a low rating on uniqueness, a very high
rating on social influences, and high ratings on causality and
unconscious forces. Klein and other object relations theorists
rate average on optimism versus pessimism.

10

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