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PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES MELANIE KLEIN’S OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY BIOGRAPHY Full Name: Melissa Reizes Klein Date of Birth: March 30, 1882 Birthplace: Vienna, Austria Parents: Dr. Moriz and Libussa Deutsch Reizes Husband: Arthur Klein Date of Death: September 22, 1926 Background:       Youngest of...

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PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES MELANIE KLEIN’S OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY

BIOGRAPHY Full Name: Melissa Reizes Klein Date of Birth: March 30, 1882 Birthplace: Vienna, Austria Parents: Dr. Moriz and Libussa Deutsch Reizes Husband: Arthur Klein Date of Death: September 22, 1926 Background:      

Youngest of 4 children. Had three children: Melitta, Hans and Erich Moved to Budapest and met Sandor Ferenczi, a member of Freud’s inner circle and the person who introduced her into the world of psychoanalysis. Believed that children internalize both positive and negative feelings toward their mother. Established psychoanalytic practice as Berlin. Originated Play Therapy

Overview of Objects Relations Theory: 1. Infant’s drives are directed to an object – a breast, a penis, a vagina and so on. 2. Child’s relation to the breast is fundamental and serves as prototype for later relations to whole objects, such as mother and father. 3. Less emphasis on biologically based drives and more importance on consistent patterns of interpersonal relationships. 4. It is more maternal and stressing the intimacy and nurturing of the mother. 5. Generally see human contact and relatedness – not as a sexual pleasure – as the prime motive of human behavior. CONCEPTS PSYCHIC LIFE OF THE INFANT  Stressed the importance of the first 4 or 6 months.  Infants do not begin life with a blank slate but with an inherited predisposition to reduce anxiety they experience as a result of the conflict produced by the forces of the life instinct and the power of death instinct.

Phantasies

PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES  

Infant possesses an active phantasy life. Phantasies are psychic representation of unconscious Id instincts.

Objects  

From early infancy, children relate to these external objects, both in fantasy and in reality. Earliest object relations: breast.

POSITIONS 

Ways of dealing with both internal and external objects.

Paranoid-Schizoid Position 

A way of organizing experiences that includes both paranoid feelings of being persecuted and a splitting of internal and external objects into good and the bad.

Depressive Position  

The feelings of anxiety over losing a loved object coupled with a sense of guilt for wanting to destroy that object constitutes. Children in the depressive position recognize that the loved object and the hated object are now one and the same.

PSYCHIC DEFENSE MECHANISM 

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Introjection o Infants fantasize taking into their body those perceptions and experiences that they have had with the external object, originally the mother’s breast. o “Incorporate unconsciously” the object. Projection o Fantasy that one’s own feelings and impulses actually reside in another person and not within one’s body. Splitting o Keeping apart incompatible impulses. o Setting apart the good and the bad objects. Projective Identification o When infants split off unacceptable parts of themselves, project them into another object and finally introject them back into themselves in a changes or distorted form.

INTERNALIZATION 

Ego

PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES

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o Reaches maturity at a much earlier stage. o Mostly unorganized at birth. o Begins to evolve with the infant’s first experience with feeding : good and bad breast. o “Sense of Self’ Superego o Emerges much earlier in life o Not an outgrowth of Oedipus complex o More harsh and cruel o To manage anxiety, the child’s ego mobilizes “libido” (life instinct) against the death instinct. Oedipus complex o Begins during the earliest months of life. o Significant part: children’s fear of retaliation from their parent for their fantasy of emptying the parent’s body. o Stressed the importance of children retaining positive feelings toward both parents during the Oedipal years.

FOLLOWERS OF MELANIE KLEIN    

Margaret Mahler Heinz Kohut John Bowlby Mary Ainsworth...