Melanie Klein: Object Relations Theory

I. Overview

• Klein's intent was to merely validate and extend Freud's initial hypotheses and theory.
• At the time Klein began her direct investigations with children, Freud's theories remained largely extrapolations back into childhood from adult memories and fantasies.
• Klein and Anna Freud disagreed concerning the technique in child analysis, which ultimately led to a split in psychoanalytic camps.

II. Introduction to Object Relations Theory

• Differs from Freudian theory in three major ways:

1. More emphasis on interpersonal relationships and less emphasis on biologically based drives.

2. Stresses the infant's relationship with the mother.

3. Suggests that people are motivated primarily for human contact rather than for sexual pleasure.

• In addition:

1. Difference in major neurotic conflict and the developmental period of study.

2. Difference in conceptualization of oedipal complex

3. Different origin of the superego

4. Children can be analyzed through play

5. Fluid conceptualization of the psyche rather than stable

6. Terrors of annihilation and abandonment, rather than id impulses.

• object refers to any person or part of a person that infants introject onto their psychic structure (taken in) and then later project onto other people. The breast is the most common object.

III. 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 fantasy life, albeit on an unconscious level.

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, which she saw as having a life of their own withing the child's fantasy world.

IV. Paranoid-Schizoid Position

• Klein depicts the early ego as vacillating between a loving orientation and a hateful orientation.

A. Good Breast vs. Bad Breast

• Klein portrayed the infant's experience as composed of two sharply polarized states, dramatically contrasting in both conceptual organization and emotional tone that involve the infant at the breast.
• The divided world Klein depicted was seen as being formed long before any capacity for reality-testing.
• Infant believes that his fantasies, both loving and hateful, have powerful actual impact on the objects of those fantasies.
• Emotional equanimity depends on the child's ability to keep these two worlds separate (i.e., to separate the good from the bad breast).
• To tolerate these two opposing experiential states, Klein postulated that children adopt the paranoid-schizoid position.
• Paranoid refers to the central persecutory anxiety coming from the outside.
• Schizoid refers to the central defense: splitting, the separation of the good and bad.
• Klein derived this position from the urgent necessity to defend against the persecutory anxieties generated by the death instinct.

B. Klein's Defense Mechanisms

1. Splitting: mentally keeping apart incompatible object representations (e.g., good and bad).

2. Introjection: infant's fantasy of taking into one's own body the images that one has of an external object.

3. Projection: infant's fantasy that one's own feeling and impulses reside within another person or object.

4. Projective Identification: splitting off unacceptable parts of self, projecting them onto another object, and finally introjecting them in an altered form.

V. Depressive Position

• The good and bad breast begin to be understood not as separate and incompatible experiences, but as different features of the mother as a more complex other.
• The central problem in life, is the management and containment of aggression.
• Klein proposed that infant's experience anxiety, intense terror, and guilt at about age six generated by the damage done to the child's all good object.
• The depressive position can be resolved only through the child's reparative fantasies.
• The child's belief in her own capacity for reparation is crucial to the ability to sustain the depressive position.
• That is, the position is resolved when the child forms a whole object with both good and bad qualities.

VI. Internalizations

• After introjecting external objects, infants organize them into a psychologically meaningful framework, a process called internalization.

A. Ego

• A unified ego emerges only after first splitting itself into two parts: a good me and a bad me.

B. Superego

C. Oedipal Complex

• emerges out of the child's fear of parental retaliation for emptying the mother's body.
• Same purpose as the paranoid-schizoid position-- to form a positive relationship with the good object and to avoid the bad.

VII. Envy

• Oral greed is one response to the infant's helplessness at the breast. Filled with impulses to use up the breast for its own needs, to possess and control it.
• Envy is a different response to the same situation. The envious infant no longer wants to gain access to and possess the good, but now becomes intent on spoiliting it.
• Envy destroys hope.

VIII. Other Object Relations Theorists

1. D. W. Winnicott

2. Fairbairn

3. Mahler

4. Kernberg

5. Kohut

Sullivan: Interpersonal Theory

II. Overview:

• Sullivan was the first American to construct a comprehensive personality theory-- did the majority of his work in the Washington area at St. Elizabeth's Hospital.
• Sullivan's theory has proved influential in the development of social-cognitive psychology and is the sole theoretical impetus for group psychotherapy (Yalom).

II. Biography

III. Tensions

• Sullivan saw personality as an energy system but didn't believe in instincts
• Sullivan defined tension as potentially for action or actions themselves (i.e., energy transformations) that may not be experienced in awareness.

• Needs
• Needs are tensions brought on by a biological imbalance between the person and the physiochemical environment, both inside and outside the organism.
• While needs have a biological component, many of them stem from the interpersonal situation.
• The most basic interpersonal need is that of tenderness.
• General needs can be either physiological (e.g., food or oxygen) or interpersonal (e.g., tenderness and intimacy). When satisfying general needs the infant develops characteristic modes of behavior called dynamisms.

• Anxiety
• Unlike needs which are conjunctive and call for specific action, anxiety is disjunctive and calls for no consistent actions for its relief. That is, anxiety is often diffuse and vague
• According to Sullivan, anxiety originates when the infant learns to be anxious through the empathic relationships they have with their 'mothering one.'
• Anxiety is the chief disruptive force blocking our development of good interpersonal relations.



• Energy Transformations
• Tensions that are transformed into actions, either overt or covert.

IV. Dynamisms

• Energy transformations become organized as typical behavior patterns that characterize a person throughout a lifetime.
• Those that are related to tensions, are composed of three types: disjunctive, conjunctive, and isolating.
• Disjunctive destructive patterns of behavior related to the concept of malevolence
• Conjunctive beneficial patterns of behavior such as intimacy and the self-system.
• Isolating patterns of behavior that are unrelated to interpersonal behavior (e.g., lust).




A. Malevolence

• The disjunctive dynamism of evil and hatred defined by Sullivan as a feeling of living among one's enemies.




B. Intimacy

• A conjunctive dynamism marked by a close personal relationship between two people of equal status.
• Intimacy grows out of the earlier need for tenderness but is more specific and involves a close interpersonal relationship between two people who are more or less of equal status.




C. Lust

• Lust is an isolating dynamism because it is a self-centered need based solely on sexual gratification.




D. Self-System

• The most inclusive dynamism that protects people against anxiety and maintains their interpersonal security.
• As the self-system develops, people begin to form a consistent image of themselves.
• Sullivan distinguished between the pursuit of security and the pursuit of satisfactions.




V. Personification

• Sullivan believed that people acquire certain images of self and others throughout the developmental stages




A. Bad-mother, Good-mother

• The bad-mother personification grows out of infants' experiences with a nipple that does not satisfy their hunger needs.
• Later, infants acquire a good-mother personification, as they become mature enough to recognize the tender and cooperative behavior of their mothering one.




B. Me Personifications

• During infancy children acquire three me personifications which form the building blocks of the self-personification:

1. Bad-Me: grows from experiences of punishment and disapproval.

2. Good-Me: results from experiences with reward and approval.

3. Not-me: anxiety provoking experiences that invoke security operations may become dissociated from self to form the not-me.





C. Eidetic Personifications

• Imaginary traits projected onto others and imaginary playmates that preschool-aged children often have.
• Enable children to have a safe, secure relationship and to practice interpersonal relations with no threat of negative consequences.




VI. Levels of cognition

A. Prototaxic- Experiences that are impossible to put into words or to communicate to others.

B. Parataxic- Experiences that are prelogical and nearly impossible to accurately communicate to others.

C. Syntaxic- Experiences that can be accurately communicated to and consensually validated by others.




VII. Stages of Development

A. Infancy

• The period from birth until syntaxic language. A time when a child receives tenderness from a mothering one while also learning anxiety through an empathic linkage with its mother.




B. Childhood

• The stage that lasts from the beginning of syntaxic language until the need for playmates of equal status. The child's primary interpersonal relationship continues to be with the mother, who is now differentiated from other persons who nurtured the child.
• Another important relationship is an imaginary playmate (i.e., eidetic personification)




C. Juvenile Era

• From the need for peers of equal status until the need for an intimate relationship with a chum.
• At this time, children should learn how to compete, compromise, and cooperate.




D. Preadolescence

• Mistakes made earlier can be rectified during preadolescence, but errors made in this stage are nearly impossible to overcome in later life.
• Spans the time from the need for a single best friend until the eruption of lust.
• Preadolescents typically form close relationships with friends of the same gender, although cross-gender chumships are also possible-- intimacy and love become the essence of friendships.
• Intimacy (the chumship) involves a relationship in which the two partners consensually validate one another's personal worth!




E. Early Adolescence

• With puberty comes the lust dynamism and the beginning of early adolescence.
• Development during this stage is marked by a coexistence of intimacy with a single friend of the same gender and sexual interest in many persons of the opposite gender.




F. Late Adolescence

• Begins when a person is able to feel both intimacy and lust toward the same person.
• Characterized by a stable pattern of sexual activity and the growth of the syntaxic mode (having ideas and opinions validated or repudiated) as young people learn how to live in the adult world.




G. Adulthood

• Person establishes a stable relationship with a significant other person.




VIII. Mental Disorders

• Sullivan believed that all mental disorders have an interpersonal origin and can be understood only with reference to the person's social environment.




IX. Psychotherapy

• Sullivan pioneered the notion of the therapist as a participant observer.




X. Concept of Humanity





Erikson: Post-Freudian Theory




• Overview & Biography:
• Although he considered himself a Freudian, Erikson proposed many theoretical innovations that emphasized the ego and social factors. He theorized that ego development continues throughout life.




II. Ego Psychology

• Emphasis on ego rather than id functions. The ego is the center of personality and is responsible for a unified sense of self.
• Body Ego-- experiences with one's body
• Ego-Ideal-- the image we have of ourselves in comparison with an established ideal.
• Ego-identity-- the image we have of ourselves in a variety of social roles.
• Defined the ego as "a person's capacity to unify his experiences and his actions in an adaptive manner."



• Society's Influence
• Erikson believed that the ego develops within a given society and is influenced by child-rearing practices and other cultural customs.



• Pseudospecies -- a fictional notion that they are superior to other cultures.
• In contrast to Freud's emphasis on sexuality, Erikson proposed that the prime motivation for development is social:



• Epigenetic Principle
• anything that grows has a ground plan, and that out of this ground plan the parts arise, each part having its time of special ascendancy, until all parts have arisen to form a functioning whole.



• Stages of Psychosocial Development
• Each of the eight stages of development is marked by a conflict between a syntonic (harmonious) element and a dystonic (disruptive) element, which produces a basic strength or ego quality.
• Each stage involves a crisis, and conflict centers on a distinctive issues. A crisis can be thought of as a developmental turning point.
• Out of each crisis emerges an ego strength, or virtue, that corresponds specifically to that stage.
• In Erikson's theory each of these stages must be considered not simply from the individual's point of view but also from a social point of view.




INFANCY

• Erikson's view of infancy (the 1^st year of life) is similar to Freud's concept of the oral stage..
• The psychosexual mode of infancy is oral-sensory, which is characterized by both receiving and accepting.
• Hope-- is the enduring belief in the attainability of primal wishes in spite of anarchic urges and rages of dependency.
• The psychosocial crisis is trust vs. mistrust which leads to the strength of hope.




EARLY CHILDHOOD

• The 2^nd - 3^rd year of life is early childhood, a period that compares to Freud's anal stage but also includes mastery of other body functions such as walking, urinating, and holding.
• The psychosexual mode of early childhood is anal-urethral-muscular.
• Shame is the estrangement of being exposed and conscious of being looked at disapprovingly, of wishing to bury one's face or sink into the ground.
• doubt is the estrangement of being unsure of one's will and of those who would dominate it.
• The central crisis of early childhood is autonomy vs. Shame and doubt, which produces will the basic strength of childhood.
• The core pathology is compulsion.
• Will-- the unbroken determination to exercise free choice as well as self-restraint in spite of the unavoidable experience of shame, doubt, and a certain rage over being controlled by others.




PLAY AGE

• From about the 3^rd to the 5^th year, children experience the play age, a period that parallels Freud's phallic phase.
• The primary psychosexual mode of the play age is genital-locomotor.
• The estrangement of this stage, is a sense of guilt over goals contemplated and acts done, initiated, or merely fantasized.
• Purpose-- is the courage to envision and pursue valued and tangible goals guided by conscience but not paralyzed by guilt and the fear of punishment.
• Thus, the psychosocial crisis is Initiative vs. Guilt which helps children to act with purpose and to set goals.




SCHOOL AGE

• The period from about 6 to 12 is called the school age, a time of psychosexual latency, but of psychosocial growth beyond the family.
• The child develops a sense of industriousness -- he begins to comprehend the tool world of his culture and he can become an eager and absorbed member of school, which gradually overtakes play.
• The danger of this stage lies in the development of a sense of inadequacy or inferiority.
• The psychosocial crisis is industry vs. inferiority which leads to the strength of competence-- the free exercise of intelligence in the completion of serious tasks.




ADOLESCENCE

• Adolescence begins with puberty and is marked by a person's struggle to find ego identity.
• The psychosexual mode of adolescence is puberty or genital maturation.
• fidelity-- the opportunity to fulfill personal potential in a context which permits the young person to be true to himself and true to significant others.
• The psychosocial crisis is identity vs. identity confusion which produces fidelity. Lack of belief in one's own selfhood results in role repudiation, the core pathology of adolescence.

1. Psychobiography of Mahatma Gandhi

2. Delinquency

• A youth without identity is like a powder keg left unguarded.




YOUNG ADULTHOOD

• Young adulthood, from about 18 to 30, begins with the acquisition of intimacy and ends with the development of generativity (the training of the next generation).
• The psychosexual mode of young adulthood is genitality, which is expressed as mutual trust between partners in a stable sexual relationship.
• The danger of this stage is possible psychosocial isolation-- the avoidance of contacts which commit to intimacy.
• Love -- A mutual devotion greater than the differences between people.
• The psychosocial conflict is intimacy vs. isolation which leads to the strength of love.




ADULTHOOD

• The period from 31 to 60 is adulthood, a time when people make significant contributions to society.
• The psychosexual mode of adulthood is procreativity or caring for one's children, the children of others, and the material products of one's society.
• Generativity is primarily the concern with establishing and guiding the next generation.
• Care-- the broadening concern for what has been generated
• The psychosocial crisis is generativity vs. Stagnation which results in the strength of care.




OLD AGE

• The final stage of development from about 60 until death is a time that can be productive for individuals and for their societies.
• The psychosexual mode of old age is generalized sensuality-- taking pleasure in a variety of sensations and an appreciation of the traditional life style of the opposite sex.
• Integrity implies an emotional integration of the past (personal and collective) and the acceptance of leadership in the present.
• Wisdom -- a detached and yet active concern with life in the face of death.
• The psychosocial crisis is integrity (ego identity) vs. despair (the surrender of hope) which leads to the strength of wisdom.




V. Conclusions