Republic of the Philippines
Tarlac State University
College of Arts and Social Sciences
Department of Psychology and Human Services
PSY 105: Theories of Personality
Melanie Klein:
Object Relations Theory
MODULE 04
HS 9: PERSONALITY
Johnkris Cornel D. Tulabot, RPm
Overview of Object Relations Theory:
• The object relations theory of Melanie Klein was built on
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 4
to 6 months after birth.
• The child’s relation to the breast is fundamental and
serves as a prototype for later relations to whole objects,
such as mother and father.
Dynamics of
1. Object relations theory
Personality places less emphasis on
biologically based drives
and more importance on
consistent patterns of
interpersonal relationships.
Dynamics of
Personality 2. Tends to be more
maternal, stressing the
intimacy and nurturing
of the mother.
Dynamics of
3. Object relations
Personality theorists generally see
human contact and
relatedness—not sexual
pleasure—as the prime
motive of human
behavior.
Psychic Life of • Whereas Freud emphasized the first few
years of life, Klein stressed the
importance of the first 4 or 6 months. To
the Infant her, infants do not begin life with a blank
slate but with an inherited predisposition
to reduce the anxiety they experience as
a result of the conflict produced by the
forces of the life instinct and the power
of the death instinct. The infant’s innate
readiness to act or react presupposes the
existence of phylogenetic endowment, a
concept that Freud also accepted.
One of Klein’s basic
Phantasies assumptions is that the
infant, even at birth,
possesses an active phantasy
life. These phantasies are
psychic representations of
unconscious id instincts; they
should not be confused with
the conscious fantasies of
older children and adults.
Objects are where
Objects drives/instincts are directed.
Klein agreed with Freud that
humans have innate drives or
instincts, including a death
instinct. Drives, of course, must
have some object. Thus, the
hunger drive has the good
breast as its object, the sex drive
has a sexual organ as its object,
and so on.
• THE GOOD BREAST- provides
love, comfort, and gratification.
• THE BAD BREAST – experiences
of starving, enraged, terrified, and
vengeful.
BAD GOOD
BREAST BREAST
Positions
• In their attempt to deal with this dichotomy of good and bad
feelings, infants organize their experiences into positions, or
ways of dealing with both internal and external objects.
• Klein saw human infants as constantly engaging in a basic
conflict between the life instinct and the death instinct, that is,
between good and bad, love and hate, creativity and
destruction. As the ego moves toward integration and away
from disintegration, infants naturally prefer gratifying
sensations over frustrating ones.
Paranoid-Schizoid Position
• A way of organizing experiences that include both paranoid
feelings of being persecuted and a splitting of internal and
external objects into the good and the bad.
• According to Klein, infants develop the paranoid-schizoid
position during the first 3 or 4 months of life, during which
time the ego’s perception of the external world is subjective
and fantastic rather than objective and real.
Depressive Position
• A way of organizing experiences that include feelings of
anxiety over losing a loved object coupled with a sense of
guilt for wanting to destroy that object constitutes what Klein
called the depressive position.
• An infant begins to view external objects as a whole and to
see that good and bad can exist in the same person.
• Begins during the 5th or 6th months of life.
Klein (1955) suggested that, from very early infancy, children Psychic
adopt several psychic defense mechanisms to protect their ego
against the anxiety aroused by their own destructive fantasies. Defense
These intense destructive feelings originate with oral sadistic
anxieties concerning the breast—the dreaded, destructive Mechanisms
breast on the one hand and the satisfying, helpful breast on the
other. To control these anxieties, infants use several psychic
defense mechanisms, such as introjection, projection, splitting,
and projective identification.
By introjection, Klein simply meant
that infants fantasize taking into their Introjection
body those perceptions and
experiences that they have had with
the external object, originally the
mother’s breast.
Projection is the fantasy that
one’s own feelings and Projection
impulses actually reside in
another person and not
within one’s body.
Infants can only manage the good
and bad aspects of themselves and
of external objects by splitting them,
Splitting
that is, by keeping apart
incompatible impulses. In order to
separate bad and good objects, the
ego must itself be split.
A psychic defense mechanism in Projective
which infants split off unacceptable
parts of themselves, project them Identification
into another object, and finally
introject them back into themselves
in a changed or distorted form.
Internalizations
• When object relations theorists speak of
internalizations, they mean that the person takes
in (introjects) aspects of the external world and
then organizes those introjections into a
psychologically meaningful framework. In Kleinian
theory, three important internalizations are the
ego, the superego, and the Oedipus complex.
• EGO- One’s sense of Self. Klein believed that although the
ego is mostly unorganized at birth, it nevertheless is strong
enough to feel anxiety, to use defense mechanisms, and to
form early object relations in both phantasy and reality.
• SUPEREGO- Terror, harsh cruel part of the self. Klein’s
picture of the superego differs from Freud’s in at least three
important respects. First, it emerges much earlier in life;
second, it is not an outgrowth of the Oedipus complex; and
third, it is much more harsh and cruel. Klein arrived at these
differences through her analysis of young children, an
experience Freud did not have.
• OEDIPUS COMPLEX- Sense of self-
directing love towards the parents.
• FEMALE OEDIPAL DEVELOPMENT
• MALE OEDIPAL DEVELOPMENT
Later Views on Object Relations
Margaret Mahler, Heinz Kohut, John
Bowlby, & Mary Ainsworth
MODULE 04
HS 9: PERSONALITY
Johnkris Cornel D. Tulabot, RPm
Margaret Mahler’s View
• To Mahler, an individual’s psychological birth begins during
the first weeks of postnatal life and continues for the next
3 years or so.
• By psychological birth, Mahler meant that the child
becomes an individual separate from his or her primary
caregiver, an accomplishment that leads ultimately to a
sense of identity.
• To achieve psychological birth and individuation, a child
proceeds through a series of three major developmental
stages and four substages.
Psychological Birth
A child becomes an individual
separate from his or her primary
caregiver, an accomplishment that
leads ultimately to a sense of
identity.
Stage Age Description
Normal Autism Birth to about “Unhatched bird egg”, A period of absolute primary narcissism in which
3 or 4 weeks Objectless an infant is unaware of any other person
Normal Symbiosis 4th or 5th week to “Shell Egg is now beginning A period of realization that one cannot satisfy
4th or 5th month to crack”, Preobjects their own needs, and the recognition of the
primary caregiver
Separation-Individuation 4th or 5th month to A period of separation from the mother,
30th to 36th month achievement of sense of individuation and
development of feelings of personal identity
5th month until A period of curiosity or fear with strangers
o Differentiation 7th to 10th month “Hatching an egg”, Objects
in the external world is
7th to 10th month to dangerous A period of establishing a bond with the mother,
o Practicing 15th to 16th month and developing an autonomous ego
16th to A period of desiring to bring the mother and the
o Rapprochement 25th month self back together, both physically and
psychologically
o Libidinal Object 3rd year of life A period of developing a constant inner
Consistency representation of the mother so that being
physical separation is tolerable
Heinz Kohut’s View
• The self evolves from a vague and undifferentiated
image to a clear and precise sense of individual
identity.
• The mother-child relationship is key to
understanding later development.
• Human relatedness, not instinctual drives, are at the
core of human personality.
• Adult Caregivers act as ”selfobjects” to gratify the
physical and psychological needs of an infant.
John Bowlby’s View
• The attachments formed during childhood
have an important impact on adulthood.
• Human and primate infants go through a
clear sequence of reactions when
separated from their primary caregivers.
Three Stages of Separation Anxiety
1. Protest – When the caregiver is first out of
sight, infants will cry, resist soothing by other
people, and search for their caregiver.
2. Despair - As separation continues infants
become quiet, sad, passive, listless, and apathetic.
3. Detachment - When infants become
emotionally detached from people, including their
caregivers.
Attachment Theory
First Assumption:
A responsive and accessible caregiver (usually
the mother) must create a secure base for the
child.
Second Assumption:
A bonding relationship (or lack thereof) becomes
internalized and serves as a working mental
model on which future friendships and love
relationships are built.
Mary Ainsworth’s View
• Influenced by Bowlby’s Attachment Theory.
• Developed a technique for measuring the
type of attachment style that exists between
the caregiver and infant known as “Strange
Situation.”
Strange Situation
(1) Mother, baby, and experimenter (lasts less
than one minute).
(2) Mother and baby alone.
(3) A stranger joins the mother and infant.
(4) Mother leaves baby and stranger alone.
(5) Mother returns and the stranger leaves.
(6) Mother leaves; infant left completely alone.
(7) Stranger returns.
(8) Mother returns and the stranger leaves.
.
Republic of the Philippines
Tarlac State University
College of Arts and Social Sciences
Department of Psychology and Human Services
PSY 105: Theories of Personality
