Object Relations Theory
-Extending ego psychology, and focused even less on classical drive theory and more on the person’s interpersonal interests; that is, people are relationship-seeking more than they are focused on expressing instincts
-Object: That which satisfied the need to relate
-Object Relations: How experiences with important people in the past are represented in parts or aspects of the self and how they then affect one’s relationships with others in the present to satisfy the need to relate
-Cathexis: Investing psychic energy in an object to satisfy an instinctual need
Melanie Klein
-Took psychoanalytic theory in new direction
-Redefined drives as psychological forces that seek
people as objects
-People construct internal mental representations of other people, project them onto other people, and use their resultant experiences to confirm or disconfirm their internal representations
-Splitting
-As mother both nurtures (acceptance) and frustrates (rejection), the child develops
the mental representation of both good and
bad objects (including both of the self and of important others)
- The good and bad objects are opposites
- Bad aspects arouse aggressive feelings, which make child anxious and leads child to split off bad self, projecting it on to others, and retain good self as part of self
- Healthy development is achieved through
-Frustration promoting separation from mother, which may lead to individuation by integrating good and bad aspects of the self and others
Margaret Mahler
-Chronicled six stages of ego development on way to separation and individuation
-Development involves movement from narcissism to recognizing external world
-Development involves movement from symbiosis with mother to self-reliant “me”
Heinz Kohut
-New self-theory because Freud’s tripartite division of mind cannot explain the development of ambitions and ideals (the two poles of the nuclear self)
-Felt Freud’s theory of development leaves out important interpersonal interactions responsible for development of empathic understanding, self-esteem, and healthy adaption to life
-Guilty Man vs. Tragic Man
-Guilty Man: Freud felt we’re struggling to reduce tensions from the instincts’ desire for pleasure, while avoiding punishment from the external world and excessive guilt from the superego
-Tragic Man: Kohut feels we’re struggling to fulfill the aims of the ambitions and ideals of the bipolar nuclear self
Self-Psychology vs. Freudian Psychology
Freud Kohut
-Driven by instincts vs. -Need for human relatedness
(sex & aggression) (to be mirrored & to idealize)
-Pathology due to frustration and vs. -Pathology due to threats and
repression of instincts damage to self
-Ego Psychology and Kohut’s Self-Psychology
-Viewed as extension of Ego Psychology, which holds that ego, when healthy, acts to unify and direct personality functioning
-Instead, Kohut believed the Self, when healthy, unifies and directs personality functioning, not the ego
-The id, ego, and superego are all facets and agencies of an underlying self
-A healthy self strengthens the ego
-Object Relations
-Freud: Object is a target of the instincts (sexual and aggressive), which can be another person, a part of a person, or a thing
-Kohut: Objects are other people
-External objects are real people
-Internal objects are mental representations of people or things that exist within the self
-Self-Objects are internal objects that represent psychologically important people who support the cohesion of the self and which help the individual to regulate tensions and stresses
-Self-Objects are required and change throughout life to help us cope with particular problems and issues that confront us
-For healthy functioning, we need to transform self-objects gradually and integrate them into our own personalities
-Development
-We have no self at birth
-But, we exist in a state of Primary Narcissism (a state of perfect, blissful self-love)
-From this and through experience, we gradually develop what Kohut called a
-Nuclear Self
-First developed during the first 2-3 months of life through a positive interaction between child and parent
-Continues to evolve through interactions with parents for the first 2-3 years of life
-Nuclear Self is Bipolar (ambitions and goals)
Its development involves coming to grips with the imperfections of the self through needs to be mirrored and to idealize in interactions with parents:
1. The Grandiose Self: the child’s unconscious belief that he or she is great and perfect
-Ambitions develop from having been mirrored
-Empathic Mirroring:
-We all have a need to be mirrored, or a yearning to be admired and to have an impact on others
-Mother puts self in child’s place, understands the child’s exhibitionistic needs to be admired, and tries to meet those needs
-Optimal Frustration: Through empathic mirroring, the mother gradually makes clear that these needs are unrealistic and frustrates them in a loving, supportive way.
2. The Idealizing Self
-Goals derive from our innate need to idealize
-We tend to idealize our father, seen as an admired and omnipotent object with whom the child can identify to form a self-object: the Idealized Parent Imago
-Optimally-failing parent: Father gradually and empathically reveals his limitations to child at appropriate times
3. Transmuting internalization: As parents provide optimal frustrations, the child can disengage (decathect) some narcissistic energy from the grandiose self and invest it in a more realistic and independent nuclear self
-Cohesive Self
-A more organized and integrated self
-A quality of the nuclear self, or the degree of integration, coherence, and vitality of the nuclear self
-Basis for healthy development
-Autonomous Self
-The epitomy of mental health
-An independent self that is liberated from unrealistic narcissistic needs and able to experience the joy of creative maturity
-Kohut versus Freud on Development
-Accepts Freud’s stages of development, but
-Reinterprets Freud’s stages in terms of development of the self rather than in terms of dealing with sexual and aggressive instincts
-Sees psychopathology as the result of a damaged nuclear self and defensive efforts to cope with it
-Each stage represents another phase in dealing with thethe challenge to merge the grandiose self and the idealized parent imago into more realistic structures
-Talks about fragmentations of the Nuclear Self, a concept that is similar to Freud’s concept of fixation, but based on notion of damages to the nuclear self due to unempathic caretaking
Freud Kohut
(Frustrated Sexual Aims) (Unempathic Caretaking)
Oral Stage: Conflicts over Weaning Unempathic mirroring & care of needs
Anal Stage: Conflicts over Toilet Training Unempathic mirroring of giving feces
Phallic Stage: Oedipus/Electra Conflicts Only experienced if nuclear self is cohesive;
otherwise, child remains focused on grandiose self; successful resolution yields definite male or female self
Latency: Social Competence Idealized need issues & Superego development
Genital Stage: Adjustment in work & love A vigorous self can solve life’s problems
Later Life: No changes Continuous efforts to strengthen autonomous
self
Otto Kernberg
-Continued object relations perspective that psychopathology is the result of immature and ineffective interpersonal relations
-Elaborated splitting to mean failure to consolidate
positive and negative experiences between oneself and other people
-Emotions are the building blocks of drives (sexual arousal in parent-child relationships is the source of libido; rage is the basis of the aggressive drive)
-Personality is based on the psychic structures that are built under the influence of early emotional events with significant others
-Kohut thought personality disorders are due to empathic failures, Kohut believes they are due to drives that have not been neutralized
-Kernberg noted importance of cultural determinism as well as intrapsychic and biological determinism
-Developed expressive psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy, which relies less on transference and more on clarifying patient’s distortions of reality
Nancy Chodorow
-Aimed to improve object relations theory by adding feminist and social perspectives
-Described “reproduction of mothering”
-Early relationship with mother produces a desire for reciprocal intimacy in women and limiting of nurturing in men (gender identity)
-Women’s personalities develop to emphasize ongoing interpersonal relationships; men grow to see themselves as distinct and separate
-Freud acknowledge his understanding of women was limited and saw the role of culture in the gender identity development
Relational-Cultural Theory: The Stone Center Group
-J. B. Miller, I. P. Stiver, J. V. Jordan, J. L. Surrey
-Traditional theories have been based on strict gender stereotypes that hinder both men and women from reaching their potential
-Show how concepts that were devalued because they are associated with women are strengths (e.g., cooperation, giving, nurturing) and how male-related concepts apply to women
-As development begins in affiliation and relation (rather than in self-enhancement, our potential is to be found there rather than in individual power, achievement, and self-sufficiency
-Women’s growth is organized through the feeling of connectedness; development occurs “within relationships,” not in isolation
-Connections are the origins of growth and disconnections block growth: a move from individualistic values to relational ones
-Development is a process of relationship-differentiation more than a process of separation-individuation
-Connections involve, not relating to objects, but
-Mutuality: relating and sharing in which all are fully participating
-Empathy: experiencing the thoughts and feelings of another while simultaneously knowing one’s own different thoughts and feelings
-Disconnections, breaks in mutuality and empathy, which can show in families as
-secrecy (denies “unacceptable” reality)
-parental inaccessibility (precludes mutuality)
-parentification (child acts as parent)
-Central Relational Paradox: due to past relationship troubles, it is difficult to forum new connections because cannot acknowledge the full range of their experience and feelings
-Therapy is a process of “moving in relationship, where therapist and client are moving toward mutual empathy