Theories of

KLEIN: OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY

Personality

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 through being psychoanalyzed by Sandor Ferenczi and other Freudian analysts. As
an analyst, she specialized in working with young children. In 1927, she moved to London where she practiced
psychoanalysis 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 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. Phantasies
Klein assumed that very young infants possess an active, unconscious phantasy 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 phantasy 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 then has
a relationship with the ideal breast and the persecutory breast. To control this situation, infants adopt the

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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
phantasize 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 ego against anxiety
aroused by their own destructive fantasies.
A. Introjection
Klein defined introjection as the phantasy 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 phantasy 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
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 phantasy 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.

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C. Oedipus Complex
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 phantasy 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
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 anxiety: (1) protest, (2) apathy and despair, and

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(3) emotional detachment from people, including the primary caregiver. Children who reach the third stage 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 re-experience 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 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 systematically to examine 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 have extended the research on attachment and adult romantic relationships. They
tested the relation of attachment style to the type of information people seek or avoid regarding their romantic
partner and relationship (Rholes, Simpson, Tran, Martin, & Friedman, 2007). They found their predictions were
borne out in that avoidant people showed less interest in information about their partner, while anxious people
sought more information.
Other recent research has explored the role of attachment styles in the relationships of military officers and their
soldiers (Davidovitz, Mikulincer, Shaver, Izsak, & Popper, 2007; Popper & Mayseless, 2003) and other leader-
follower relationships. Rivka Davidovitz and colleagues used the same measure of attachment as Rholes et al’s
(2007, above) study. Their results gave further support of the generality and importance of attachment style in
various kinds of relationships.
XI. Critique of Object Relations Theory

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KLEIN: OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY
Personality

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.