Melanie Klein: Object Relations Theory

A comprehensive set of 100 vocabulary-style flashcards covering Melanie Klein's Object Relations Theory, Harry Stack Sullivan's Interpersonal Theory, and related attachment and development models.

Object Relations Theory

An offspring of Freud’s instinct theory that emphasizes consistent patterns of interpersonal relationships over biological drives.

Maternal Focus

A characteristic of Object Relations Theory that stresses the intimacy and nurturing of the mother.

Klein's Basic Assumption

Early real or fantasized relations with the mother or breast become a model for all later interpersonal relationships.

Phantasies/Fantasies

Psychic representations of unconscious id instincts present at birth.

Good Breast Phantasy Example

Infants who fall asleep while sucking on their fingers phantasizing about having the mother’s good breast inside them.

Bad Breast Phantasy Example

Hungry infants who cry and kick are phantasizing that they are destroying the bad breast.

Objects

Any person, part of a person, or thing through which the aim of a drive is satisfied.

Positions

Ways of dealing with both internal and external objects into which infants organize their experiences.

Paranoid-Schizoid Position

A way of organizing experiences in the first $3$ or $4$ months involving paranoid feelings and splitting objects into good and bad.

$3$ or $4$ months

The age range for the Paranoid-Schizoid Position.

Persecutory Breast

An object that provides frustration and is viewed by the infant as an object to be destroyed.

Ideal Breast

An object that provides nourishment, love, and comfort, which the infant aims to devour and harbor.

Depressive Position

A stage where the infant views objects as incorporating both good and bad feelings and feels guilt for destructive urges.

$5$-$6$ months

The age range for the Depressive Position.

Psychic Defense Mechanisms

Strategies used by infants to protect their ego against anxiety, including introjection and projection.

Introjection

The fantasy of taking into the body perceptions and experiences had with an external object, such as the mother’s breast.

Projection

The fantasy that one’s own feelings and impulses actually reside in another person and not within one’s own body.

Splitting

Keeping incompatible impulses apart to enable one to see positive and negative sides of self or others.

Projective Identification

Splitting off unacceptable parts of self, projecting them into another object, and introjecting them back in a distorted form.

Ego (Klein's View)

A sense of self that is unorganized at birth but strong enough to use defense mechanisms and form early object relations.

Superego (Klein's View)

An internal structure that emerges much earlier than the Oedipus complex and is characterized as harsh and cruel.

Terror

The primary emotion produced by the early superego in infants, rather than guilt.

Oedipus Complex Climax

According to Klein, this occurs during the genital stage at around age $3$ or $4$.

Fear of Retaliation

A significant part of the Oedipus complex where children fear parents will punish their fantasy of emptying the parent's body.

Female Oedipal Stage ($6$ months)

The point when a girl begins to view the breast as more positive than negative and fantasizes about her father's penis.

Penis Envy (Klein's definition)

Stems from a girl's wish to internalize her father's penis and receive a baby from him.

Passive Homosexual Attitude

A prerequisite for male Oedipal development where the boy shifts oral desires from the mother's breast to the father's penis.

Oral-Sadistic Impulses

The boy’s desires to bite off his father’s penis and murder him during Oedipal development.

Margaret Mahler

Theorist who believed children's sense of identity rests on a three-step relationship with their mother.

Normal Autism

The first step of Mahler's relationship model where infants have basic needs cared for by the mother.

Normal Symbiosis

The second step of Mahler's model where the child develops a safe relationship with an all-powerful mother.

Separation-Individuation

The third step of Mahler's model where the child emerges from the mother's circle to establish separate individuality.

Differentiation

The sub phase of separation-individuation involving bodily breaking away from the symbiotic orbit.

$5^{th}$ to $7^{th}$-$10^{th}$ month

The timeframe for the Differentiation sub phase.

Practicing

The sub phase where children distinguish their bodies from their mother's and develop an autonomous ego.

$7^{th}$/$10^{th}$ to $15^{th}$/$16^{th}$ month

The timeframe for the Practicing sub phase.

Rapprochement

The sub phase characterized by a desire to bring the mother and self back together.

$16$ to $25$ months

The age range for the Rapprochement sub phase.

Libidinal Object

Developing a constant inner representation of the mother to tolerate physical separation.

$3^{rd}$ year of life

The timeframe when a child develops a constant inner representation of the mother (libidinal object).

Heinz Kohut

Theorist who applied object relations to borderline and narcissistic personality disorders.

Mirroring Self Object

A person who reflects approval of an infant's behavior, helping develop the grandiose-exhibitionistic self.

Grandiose-Exhibitionistic Self

The infant's sense of 'I am perfect' developed when others see them as perfect.

Idealized Parent Image

The feeling that someone else is perfect and the self is part of them ('You are perfect, but I am part of you').

John Bowlby

Investigated infant attachment and identified three stages of separation anxiety.

Separation Anxiety

Negative consequences of being separated from the mother, investigated by Bowlby.

Protest

The first stage of separation anxiety where infants cry and search for their caregiver.

Despair

The second stage of separation anxiety where infants become quiet, passive, and apathetic.

Detachment

The third stage of separation anxiety where infants avoid the caregiver and become emotionally detached.

Mary Ainsworth

Psychologist who developed the technique for measuring attachment styles toward caregivers.

Strange Situation

The technique developed by Mary Ainsworth to measure attachment styles.

Secure Attachment

An attachment style where infants are happy and initiate contact when the mother returns.

Anxious-Resistant Attachment

An attachment style where infants become upset when the mother leaves and reject soothing upon her return.

Anxious-Avoidant Attachment

An attachment style where infants stay calm when the mother leaves and ignore her when she returns.

Play Therapy

Klein's technique for allowing children to express unconscious wishes through toys.

Internal Prosecutors

The result of introjecting bad objects, which then haunt the ego.

"Good Me and Bad Me"

The dual perception of self made possible by the process of splitting.

"If others see me as perfect, then I am perfect"

The core belief associated with the grandiose-exhibitionistic self.

Mirroring

The act of a self object reflecting approval of an infant's behavior.

Empathy (Anxiety Transfer)

The process through which anxiety moves from the parent to the infant.

Oedipus Complex Start (Klein)

Begins during the earliest months of life and overlaps with oral and anal stages.