Course Title: Theories of Personality Section Faculty

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Course Title : Theories of Personality

Section : AB 21 & BP-21


Faculty : Ms. Ma. April F. Arcilla, MAPsy
Chapter 6
Learning Module No. 6

I. Introduction

The object relations theory of Melanie Klein was built in careful observations of young children. In
contrast to Freud, who emphasized the first 4 to 6 years of life, Klein stressed the importance of the
first to 4 to 6 months after birth. She insisted that the infants drive’s (hunger, sex, etc) are directed to
an object – a breast, penis, vagina and so on.

II. Learning Goals and Objectives

1. Know and understand the psychic life of an Infant


2. Identify the psychic defense mechanism
3. Explain the views of different psychologist on Object Relations

III. Lecture Notes

A. MELANIE REIZES KLEIN (1882 – 1960)


 Born in Vienna, Austria
 Father was a physician turned dental assistant
 Mother was a shopkeeper
 Family was neither proreligious nor antireligious
 Klein aspired to be a physician
 Early life marked by loss (death of elder sister when she was four, lost her father at 18)
 Did not have a happy marriage
 Klein “dreaded sex and abhorred pregnancy” (Grosskurth, 1986)
 Nevertheless, she had three children: Mellita, Hans, and Erich
 Mellita later became a psychoanalyst herself, and had an antagonistic relationship with her mother, up
until Melanie Klein’s death
 Klein was first introduced to psychoanalysis through Sandor Ferenczi
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 She then began an analysis with Karl Abraham; unfortunately, he died 14 months after she started her
analysis with him, devastating her
 She then began a self-analysis, which continued throughout her life
 Her “slight divergence from standard psychoanalytic theory” drew criticisms from her Berlin colleagues;
eventually, she left for England, staying there permanently in 1927
 When Anna Freud and her father settled in England in 1938, British psychoanalysis was divided
 In 1946, the British [Psychoanalytic] Society accepted three training procedures: Melanie Klein’s
“traditional” technique, Anna Freud’s technique, and a “neutral” Middle Group

Object Relations Theory


 An offspring of Freud’s instinct theory
 But, differs from it in at least 3 ways
 First, it places less emphasis on biologically based drives, and more emphasis on consistent patterns of
interpersonal relationships
 Second, tends to be more maternal (as opposed to Freud’s more “paternalistic” theory) in its stress on
intimacy & nurturance on the mother’s part
 Third, it generally views human contact and relatedness – not sexual pleasure – as the prime motive of
human behavior
 While different drives have seemingly different aims, the underlying aim – tension reduction – is always
the same
 Klein and other theorists focused on the object of the drive

The “Object”

 Any person, part of the person (e.g., mother’s breast, father’s penis), or thing through which the aim is
satisfied
 Drives must have some object
 Earliest object relations are with the mother’s breast
 Later, interest develops in the face and hands, which “attend to one’s+ needs and gratify them”
 Such objects are introjected, i.e., taken into the infant’s psychic structure
 Such introjected objects are “more than internal thoughts about external objects”
 They are “fantasies of internalizing the object in concrete and physical terms”
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Phantasies
 Phantasies: psychic representations of unconscious id instincts
 Not to be confused with conscious fantasies of older children and adults, hence the distinctive spelling
 Klein’s basic assumption: the infant, even at birth, possesses an active phantasy life
 They possess unconscious images of “good” and “bad”
 As the infant matures, unconscious phantasies connected with the breast (the initial introjected object)
continue to exert an influence in psychic life, but newer ones emerge as well
 One of these phantasies involves the Oedipus complex (which will be discussed later)

Positions
 Klein viewed human infants as constantly engaging in a basic conflict between the life instinct (“good,”
“love,” “creativity”) and the death instinct (“bad,” “hate,” “destruction”)
 As the ego moves toward integration and away from disintegration, infants prefer gratification over
frustration
 Positions – ways of dealing with both internal and external objects; Klein’s preferred term over “stages
of development”
 Indicates that positions can alternate back and forth – not time periods or development phases
 These positions represent normal growth and development

1. Paranoid-Schizoid Position

 1st 3 or 4 months of life - infant’s contact / encounters with the “good” breast and the “bad” breast, i.e.,
gratification and frustration
 Alternating experiences of “good” and “bad” threaten the very existence of the infant’s vulnerable ego
 Paranoid-schizoid position – way of organizing both paranoid feelings of being persecuted and a
splitting of internal & external objects into the good and the bad
 This position is needed in order to control the “good” breast and what can “annihilate” it, i.e., the
infant’s own destructive impulses
 Preverbal splitting of the world into good and bad – a prototype for the subsequent development of
ambivalent feelings toward a single person
 Such feelings, while mostly displayed in therapy situations, can also be expressed in positive and
negative feelings toward loved ones
 Such ambivalent feelings are primitive, unconscious

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2. Depressive Position

 5th – 6th month: infant begins to view external objects as a whole


 Good and bad can exist in the same person
 Infant develops a more realistic picture of the mother
 Ego is beginning to mature; it can tolerate some of its own destructive feelings instead to
projecting them outward
 This is accompanied by the sense of possible permanent loss of the mother
 Feelings of guilt over one’s destructive impulses directed toward the caregiver also develop
 Depressive position – feelings of anxiety (of possible loss of an object/ loved one) and guilt (for
wanting to destroy that object)
 Loved and hated object – recognized as one and the same
 Resolution of depressive position – fantasizing that one has made reparations for previous
destructive desires and recognizing that the object will not go away permanently
 Incomplete resolution – lack of trust, morbid mourning at the loss of a loved one, and a variety of
other psychic disorders

Psychic Defense Mechanisms


 From very early infancy, children adopt psychic defense mechanisms that protect the ego against the
anxiety aroused by their own destructive fantasies
 To control these anxieties, children employ several psychic defense mechanisms, in particular
introjection, projection, splitting, and projective identification

1. Introjection
 Infants fantasize taking into their body those perceptions and experiences they have had with the
external object
 Introjecting good objects are a way to protect oneself against anxiety
 However, dangerous objects are introjected, they become internal persecutors
 Introjected objects are not accurate representations of real objects; they are colored by children’s
fantasies

2. Projection
 The fantasy that one’s own feelings and impulses actually reside in another person and not within
one’s body
 Just as infants use introjection to take in both good and bad objects, projection is used to get rid of
them

3. Splitting
 Keeping apart incompatible tendencies, i.e., the good and the bad aspects of oneself
 Can have a positive or negative effect on the child
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 Positive – helps people distinguish between good and bad behavior, and differentiating between
likable and unlikable acquaintances
 Negative – excessive and inflexible splitting can lead to pathological repression

4. Projective Identification
 Involves splitting off unacceptable parts of oneself, project them into another object, and finally
introject them back into oneself in a changed or distorted form
 Projective identification exerts a powerful influence on real-world, adult interpersonal relationships

Internalizations
 Among object relations theorists, internalizations refer to the idea that people take in (introject) aspects
of the external world and then organizes those introjections into a psychologically meaningful
framework
 Klein - three important internalizations:
 Ego
 Superego
 Oedipus complex
Ego
 One’s sense of self
 Reaches maturity at an earlier age than that assumed by Freud
 Ego has an early ability to sense both destructive and loving forces, and to manage them through
splitting, projection, and introjection
 While mostly unorganized at birth, the ego can feel anxiety, use defense mechanisms, and form early
object relations in both phantasy and reality
 The infant’s first object relation, the breast, becomes the prototype not only for the ego’s future
development but for the individual’s later interpersonal relations
 However, before a unified ego can emerge, it must become split (fusion, differentiation, integration)
 As infants mature, they no longer see the world in terms of partial objects, and their egos become more
integrated

Superego
 Different conceptualization from Freud in certain respects:
 Klein’s concept of the superego emerges much earlier in life
 it is not an outgrowth of the Oedipus complex
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 Klein’s concept of the superego is more harsh and cruel, at least in its early stage
 The early superego does not produce guilt, but terror
 This harsh, cruel superego is responsible for many antisocial and criminal tendencies in adults
 By the 5th or 6th year, the superego arouses little anxiety but a great measure of guilt; most of its
severity is lost, and it is gradually transformed into a realistic conscience
 Klein – the superego grows along with the Oedipus complex, and emerges as realistic guilt after
the resolution of the Oedipus complex

Oedipus Complex
 Again, several differences with Freud’s concept:
 Begins at a much earlier age
 Overlaps with the oral and anal phases
 Reaches its climax during the genital stage
 Significant part of the Oedipus complex: fear of retaliation from the parents for fantasy of
emptying the parent’s body
 Stress on the importance of retaining positive feelings for both parents during the Oedipal years
 During its early stages, the Oedipus complex serves the same need for both sexes, i.e., to
establish a positive attitude with the gratifying object and to avoid the frustrating object
 Children of each gender can direct their love either alternately or simultaneously toward each
parent
 While either child (female/male) has a positive, then an antagonistic dynamic with the same-sex
parent, both male and female children will eventually have a positive relationship with both
parents; aspects of Freud’s theory re: the Oedipal period (penis envy, castration anxiety) were
retained, but with different explanations

SUMMARY

 Klein believed that people are born with two strong drives – the life and death instincts
 Infants develop a passionate caring for the good breast and an intense hatred for the bad breast
 This leaves the person to struggle a lifetime to reconcile these unconscious psychic images of good and
bad, pleasure and pain
 Most crucial stage of life- first few months, a time when relationships with mother and other significant
objects form a model for later interpersonal relations
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 A person’s adult ability to love or hate originates with these early object relations

B. Margaret Mahler’s View


Mahler’s primary concern: individual’s psychological birth, w/c takes place during the 1 st 3 years of
life, when the child “surrenders security for autonomy”
Psychological birth: when a child becomes an individual separate from his/her primary caregiver, an
accomplishment that leads ultimately to a sense of identity
Achievement of psychological birth and individuation – 3 major developmental stages and 4
substages
Normal autism – 1st stage; a period of “absolute primary narcissism in which an infant is unaware of
any other person”
Normal symbiosis – 2nd stage; recognition of the primary caregiver and seeking a symbiotic, albeit
“omnipotent” (a “dual unity within one common boundary”) relationship
Separation-individuation – 3rd stage; psychological separation from mothers; achievement of a sense
of individuation, and the development of feelings of personal identity
Involves “surrender *of+ their delusion of omnipotence” and facing “their vulnerability to external
threats”

Sub-stages of the Separation-individuation stage


 Differentiation – bodily breaking away from the mother-infant symbiotic orbit
 Practicing – beginning to develop an autonomous ego, but still with an eye towards the mother
 Rapprochment – desire to bring their mother and themselves back together physically and
psychologically
 Libidinal object constancy – approximates the 3rd year of life; developing a constant inner
representation so as to tolerate physical separation; learning to function without the mother and
developing other object relationships
 Any errors made during the first 3 years – the time of psychological birth – may result in later
regressions to a stage when one has not yet achieved separation from the mother and thus a sense of
personal identity

C. Heinz Kohut’s View


 Kohut stressed the process by which “the self evolves from a vague and undifferentiated image
to a clear and precise sense of individual identity”
 Human relatedness, not innate instinctual drives, are at the core of human personality
 Self object – Kohut’s term for the primary caregiver
 Through emphatic interaction between infant and selfobject, the former takes in the latter’s
responses as pride, guilt, shame, or envy – the self’s building blocks
 Self – “center of the child’s psychological universe”; the child’s focus of interpersonal relations
 Infants, Kohut believed, are naturally narcissistic
 Early self becomes crystallized around 2 basic narcissistic needs:
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 need to exhibit the grandiose self, &
 need to acquire an idealized image of one or both parents
 Grandiose-exhibitionistic self – relating to a “mirroring” self object who reflects approval of
one’s behavior; “If others see me as perfect, then I am perfect”
 Idealized parent image (or imago) – opposed to the grandiose self; it implies that someone else is
perfect; still, it satisfies a narcissistic need: “You are perfect, but I am part of you”
 While both narcissistic self-images are necessary for healthy personality development, they must
change as one grows older
 If they remain unaltered, they result in a pathologically narcissistic adult personality

D. John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory


o Integrated object relations theory with an evolutionary perspective
o His attachment theory took childhood as its starting point and then extrapolated forward into
adulthood
o Attachments formed during childhood have a significant impact on adulthood

Three Stages of Separation Anxiety (Primate and Human Infants)


 Protest stage – when caregiver is out of sight, infants cry, search for caregiver
 Despair stage – as separation continues, infants become quiet, sad, listless, apathetic
 Detachment stage – infants become emotionally detached from others, including the caregiver; unique
among human infants

Bowlby’s theory rests on two fundamental assumptions:


 A responsive and accessible caregiver must create a secure base for the child (bonding relationship)
 A bonding relationship (or lack thereof) becomes internalized; serves as a mental working model on
which future friendships and love relationships are built
 Attachment style – a relationship between two people; not a trait given to an infant by the caregiver
 Attachment as a two-way street – the infant and caregiver must be responsive to each other and each
must influence the other’s behavior

E. Mary Ainsworth’s Attachment Styles


o Based on studies conducted by Ainsworth and her associates utilizing the “Strange Situation”
involving an infant and the caregiver
o Attachment styles:
o Secure attachment – infant’s confidence in the caregiver’s accessibility and responsiveness
o Anxious-resistant attachment – ambivalence and conflicting messages on the part of the infant
o Anxious-avoidant – ignoring and avoiding the caregiver after being left with a stranger or being left
alone

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IV. Assignments
1. Explain the concept of humanity of Melanie Klein
2. What are the critiques of object relations theory?

F. Related Readings
Feist, Feist, and Roberts, Theories of Personality, 8/e, 2013

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