Melanie Reizes Klein

• Vienna, Austria
Object Relations Theory • Believed her birth was unplanned >>feelings
of rejection
• Early relationships: unhealthy & tragic
Melanie Klein – Cold, distant father; suffocating mother
– Older sister’s death>>>over attachment to
her younger brother>>>difficulties with men

Melanie Reizes Klein Object Relations

• Father’s death and marriage at • less biological, more interpersonal
21>>>hindered her from being a • Maternal drives over paternalistic views
physician • Human contact and relationships over
• Analyzed son, Erich (Freudian) sexual pleasure
• Melitta & Hans analyzed by other
analysts
• Never accepted by the Freuds
• Devoted analysis on children
#kleinvsfreud

Object: anything, anyone or any part of a person

through which an aim is satisfied The Infant
• 4-6 months of life
• Life vs death>>anxiety
• Phylogenetic Endowment
Object Aim
• Active fantasy life

Tension
Reduction • ***What is the first object we recognize
as infants?
#tensionreduction
 Phantasies
• Psychic representations of
Id+unconscious
• An infant represents everything in two
ways: GOOD and BAD (alternating)
• Experiences are organized into
POSITIONS

#goodvsbad

Object
Id
=Aim

Internal External
Ego Superego
=drives =internal objects

Positions

Id Ego
– ignored – disorganized at birth
– Split: bad vs. good
– Unified upon resolution of positions
Superego
– Emerges earlier in life
– Not due to Oedipus complex, it grows
along and later becomes realistic guilt
– Much more harsh and cruel
– Early superego produces TERROR not
GUILT
Female Oedipal Complex
• 1st mos: mother’s breast as good & bad
• 6 mos: more positive
– “How are babies made?”
• Penis as a baby-giver; father fills the girl
with babies
• >>>fear of injury from mother
• Resolved: feminine position
Male Oedipal Complex
• Wants to bite off father’s penis;
castration anxiety
• Sexual intercourse with mother is bad
• Resolved: hetero or masculine position
Oedipus Complex
– Begins during early months
– Overlaps oral and anal stage
– Climaxes at the Genital Stage
– Female and Male Oedipal Complex
Male Oedipal Complex
• mother’s breast as good & bad
• Oral desire for breast to father’s penis
(feminine position)
• Homosexual feelings for
father=heterosexual feelings for mother
#heterovshomo
Paranoid-Schizoid Position
• Persecutory vs. Ideal breast
• =fear of punishment, splitting of internal
& external
• 3-4 months
• Subjective & fantastic
• Bad Vs. Good
#Splitting #Ivancase
 Paranoid-Schizoid Position
• In adults: Ambivalence
• Adults become passive rather than
active objects:
– Others as perfect; self as worthless

***Splitting

#confusedfeelings

Depressive Position
• 5-6 months
• Maturation of the ego: toleration of Anxiety
Guilt over
destructive feelings over
destructive
• Good and bad can exist in a single possible
feelings
object. loss

#tolerance #whole

Depressive Position
• Reparation-amends
• Resolved by EMPATHY

#empathy #reunification
 Introjection Projection Internalization
Taking in the good Throwing out the bad
• Taking in aspects of the external world
and organizing them into a meaningful
Defense framework
Mechanisms
Projective
Identification Splitting
Taking in the Good me & bad me
Good me & bad me
#everythinghasmeaning

Margaret Mahler Margaret Mahler

• Psychological birth (3 years):
– Separation of the baby from mother
• Emphasis on 1st 36 months of life
– Normal autism (3-4 weeks): unhatched egg
– Normal symbiosis (4-5 wks-4-5 mos): unity of
mother and child
Separation-individuation (4-5 mos to 30-36 mos):
• Differentiation (5-7 or 10 mos):
bodily breaking away
• Practicing (7 or 10 mos-15/16 mos): can
separate, but must follow w/ the eyes
• Rapprochement (16-25 mos): separation anxiety
• Libidinal object constancy (3 yrs): develop inner
representation of mom

Mary Ainsworth
• The strange situation experiment

• Secure attachment-cries when mom leaves,

happy when she returns
• Anxious resistant-cries when mom leaves,
reject soothing
• Anxious avoidant-calm althroughout