Discuss Melanie Klein’s object relation theory in detail.

Briefly discuss the role

of Margaret Mahler, Heinz Kohut, John Bowlby, and Mary Ainsworth in
criticism/modification/expansion of Klein’s object relation theory.

Diva Chokshi
Word count (excluding references): 2928
Object relation theory (ORT) is a psychoanalytic approach which concentrates on the development of
a child’s psyche since birth and his/her relationship of self to other. This school of thought believes
that biological birth does not coincide with psychological birth of a child (Likierman, 2001). The
centre of this theory is the interactions an individual has, the process of internalisation that follows
and the important role of the internalised object relations in one’s psychological life (Brandell, 2010).
The process of external relations, behaviour regulations and object representations becoming internal
psychological structures is defined as internalisation (Likierman, 2001). Therefore, object relations is
not limited only to ‘real’ relations formed with others but also includes internal mental images of
others and self. Unlike Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic approach, it does not believe that the
adaptive functions of the ego nor the driving forces of aggression and libido are the primary factors
influencing the child’s psyche development (Berzoff, Flanagan & Hertz, 2016). The object in this
approach, does not signify the thing or person only as an outside entity that frustrates or gratifies
instinctual wishes but intimately explores how the child’s needs are met (or not) in specific
relationships (Likierman, 2001). Fundamentally, ORT emphasises the primitive, absolute need for
interpersonal relations and the damage that can follow if the need is not appropriately catered to.

The present literature concerning object relation theory (ORT), boasts a myriad of different
perspectives and developments. Some might even argue that referring to it as a single theory could be
inappropriate. Instead, the same should be discussed within the context of object relations theorists, a
class of psychoanalysts with a prevailing interest in object relations, but with each individual theory
varying based on the respective theorist. The following paper will focus on one such pioneering
theorist within the field: Melanie Klienin. Additionally, it will deliberate on how a handful of other
prominent theorists complimented or contradicted her work and the impact it had on the trajectory of
how the object relations concept was understood.

To begin with, Melanie Klien (1952) encapsulated the central tenet of ORT as “there is no instinctual
urge, no anxiety situation, no mental process which does not involve objects, external or internal; in
other words, object relations are the centre of emotional life” (p.53). Kleinian ORT maintained the
predominant importance of the close relationship a new-born has with the mother during its
intrauterine life and the need for it to be replaced by strong enough external relations after birth
(Milivojeviæ & Iveziæ, 2004). She insisted that the mother’s breast could be one of the most integral
external relation. The breast then in this case would not just meet the physical needs of the baby by
feeding it but also forms the cornerstone of its mental development. Klien proposed that a child
experienced anxiety from the moment of his birth and was driven by inherent contradicting forces
death (destructiveness) and love (libido) (Berzoff et al., 2016). Additionally, polar external influences
such as the trauma of birth versus the love, warmth and food of the mother contribute to this anxious
state (Milivojeviæ & Iveziæ, 2004). Thus, the new born child’s aggressive energy and death
(destructive) instinct are equally important to its libidinal energy. The two polar forces are believed to
struggle with one another until they slowly consolidate their positions. Klein perceived the destructive
energy as the dominating one at birth, which is cultivated through a vicious cycle of anxiety giving
rise to aggression and in turn aggression leading to more anxiety. The libidinal energy’s role is to
intervene and break this cycle and to do so it would have to exert its utmost power. It was this process
that Klein credited to stimulating growth of an individual’s sexual life (Klein,1963).

Since the destructive and libidinal energies necessary to form and sustain object relations are
perceived as inherent within the Kleinian ORT, she did not refer to the new-born going through
‘stages’. Instead, she proposed two developmental orientations: The paranoid Schizoid Position and
the depressive position (Mitchell & Black, 1995). These two positions help the new-born
accommodate its feelings and emotions towards the outer and inner worlds within which it exists
(Mitchell & Black, 1995). The tools which the child used to process these orientations are termed as
‘phantasies’ and Klein believed that a child was capable of actively ‘phantasising’ since its birth.
These emanated internal and were representative of the child’s primitive thought processes about the
outside world and its relations within it (Jarvis, 2004). Interestingly, this view deviated significantly
from the accepted psychoanalytic theories present then (specifically freud’s) which reduced the early
neonatal life to bodily tensions. The concept of ‘phantasies’ offered a radicalised outlook which saw a
new-born child as ‘inherently and inseparably directed towards objects’ (Greenberg and Mitchell,
1983) with a conducive passionate relatedness to a person. The phantasies in neonates were treated as
a primitive human characteristic as opposed to merely a substitute for gratification.

The first position Klein discussed that a child within the first four to six months was in the paranoid-
schizoid position. It represented the frightening incidents the child has faced during the neonatal
period which could trigger feelings of fear, surprise and fragmentation. A child in this position
experiences the external world in fragments. He is likely to sway between moments of absolute bliss
or overwhelming discomfort. Despite the paranoid-schizoid position seeming pathological almost,
Klein claimed that it is in fact normative and each adult has experienced the same during their early
years (Likierman, 2001). In order to portray the fragmented way the child perceives the world in this
position, she referenced ‘objects’ as ‘part objects’. For instance, a new-born child will perceive his
relation to his mother’s breasts as a relation to two different objects. The good breast which feeds and
nurtures him and consecutively becomes the idealised part object. There is then the bad breast, which
frustrates and isolates him and in turn becomes a persecutory part object (Likierman, 2001).
Sequentially, the immature child’s ego will also perceive the idolised part object to protect him from
the persecutory part object.

The central defence mechanism in the paranoid-schizoid position is splitting, which refers to the
flourishing idealisation of the part object that meets the need of the child’s ego (that he loves) and the
growing expectation that it will protect him from the frustrating persecutory object (that he hates). In
order to self-preserve, the child then tries to contain and identify with the part object that he loves and
separate himself from the part object he hates. It is by splitting these two and connecting to the good
part object, that the child maintains his belief in it which Klein believed was an essential condition for
survival (Berzoff et al., 2016). In fact, she also proposed that in this process, the immature child’s ego
splits along with the object (Melanie,1946).

Furthermore, sprouting from splitting, there are other defence mechanisms which the child uses to
cope with anxiety in the paranoid-schizoid position. Namely, introjection, projection and projective
identification. Introjection and projection focus on how the child internalises and externalises objects
to form the foundation of its ego (Hindle, 2017). Specifically, the negative feelings such as
aggression or frustration towards the bad breast after suffering from hunger pains are projected
outwards and the positive sensations towards the nourishing ‘good breast’ that feeds and protects it
from the bad breast are introjected (Klein, 2002). Additionally, projective identification is an
omnipotent defence mechanism which takes projecting a step further. The child’s ego splits off the
‘part of self’ that it perceives as threatening and projects it in phantasy on to an external object. The
split off part is then deemed to have taken possession of the external object it was projected on and
transformed into having those bad elements. This phantasy blurs boundaries, where in the
‘transformed object’ is an extension of the new-born child which he can control (Feldman, 2009).
Finally, the child phantasising about containing and loving the good breast is different than the child
wanting to destroy the bad breast. It is the shift towards the depressive position which facilitates
tolerating the good and bad simultaneously in the same person and developing mature idealisation.

The depressive position is the start of when a child begins to see himself and the objects he relates to
as a whole and not merely as part objects. Klein captures the sadness the child goes through when he
realises that the good mother who nuzzles, loves and cherishes him is the same person as the bad
mother who takes long to feed him, change his diaper or handles him a little harshly. Consecutively,
the child restructures how he views himself and that the person loving the mother is the same as the
person wanting to destroy her for self-preservation (Reppen, 2013). This in turn manifests fear in
child relating to his own destructiveness and if it will ruin the good object it thoroughly depends on.
see oneself and others as multifaceted and complicated objects and not just as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ can lead
to sense of loss for the child (Berzoff et al., 2016). The depressive position is an integral point in the
development of the new-born child as it radically changes how he understands and responds to reality.
The integration of the ego directly contributes to a child realising its psychological reality and also
leads to a reduction in projection (Klein, 2002).

Lastly, Klein discussed the Oedipus complex as a significant part of the internalization process. She
believed, the depressive position and the Oedipus complex were intimately linked. However, she did
position the Oedipus situation in earlier developmental years than Freud in addition to further
extending and modifying it. Within Kleinian Oedipus complex, the neonate phantasies about his
parents as ‘combined figure’ and perceives the maternal body as consisting of rival babies and his
father’s penis. This preconception is both terrifying and exciting to the child (Klein,1945). Projections
of sadism and infantile sexuality contribute to phantasies about intercourse which exhibit sadistic
urethral, anal and oral features in the primitive version of how the child perceives the parental couple.
The Klenien Oedipus complex was the first to focus on the link the child develops towards the
maternal body. These phantasies allowed further insight into Klein’s understandings of both the
female and male complexes and primary femininity.

For Klein the oedipal situation partly and relating to infantile sadism was dominantly responsible for
the early development of primitive superego figures (Klein,1945). She saw the superego as a split off
element of the ego, into which a fusion of the death and life instincts and bad and god aspects of the
primary objects are projected. It is thus composed of both threatening and protective qualities. The
superego further increases awareness of whole objects, activates depressive guilt owing to oedipal
desires and highlights the need to repair internal parents.

Melania Klein’s contributions were initially met with rejection and abundant criticism because of the
aggressively dark nature of her ideas before eventually gaining wide acceptance. It is still important to
analyse her work under a sceptical lens for a number of reasons. Firstly, as Hinshelwood (1995) noted
her ideas were not theoretically articulate and were constructed from ever evolving clinical
observations of young children. She would communicate with her subjects about their worries in a
straightforward manner and was convinced that they would be remarkably responsive if taken
seriously. In addition to wanting to understand the child’s logic behind his or her explanations, she
tried to further understand the unseeable processes that manifested within child. One of the most
famous examples of her case studies is 10-year-old Richard, which she used to illustrate Oedipus
development. The material she chose to evidence the same were only a total of 6 analytic hours with
no indication of the overall period of sessions with Richard in the paper (Hinshelwood,1995). She
thus evidently valued experiential writing over scientific writings. While a lot of theorists believed
that her childhood experiences and traumas behaved as tools for allowing the construction of such a
profound theory, one cannot overlook the role of high subjectivity and bias in interpretation of her
case study results.

Furthermore, Greenberg and Mitchell (1988) questioned the extent to which the Kleinien ORT
focused on aggression at the cost of any other motives. They argued that the theoretical formulation
was overgeneralised and favoured unconscious phantasies above real events or people. Finally, they
minimize the role of the parental ambivalence, character pathology and parental anxiety towards the
aetiology of the new-born’s psychopathology. The parents, especially the mother is clearly seen as the
most important representation of universal attributes for the child. The argument then follows that any
problematic features of a parent’s personality or any difficulties in living should definitely have an
influence in a more immediate and direct way to the primary establishment of good and bad objects
which in turn would affect the start of psychopathology in the new-born.

Regardless of the aforementioned drawbacks, Melania Klein’s contributions to ORT and to

developmental psychology were undeniably crucial to several therapeutic practices and related
research. In addition, to being amongst one of the first few people to use psychoanalysis directly on
children, she was also a pioneer in implementing considerable never-before seen tools and techniques.
Her innovative use of play and toys to aid children in discussing their psychological issues became a
highly influential technique amongst child psychologist. Klein’s ORT attracted the attention of several
notable theorists who were inspired to critique, extend, modify or contradict it.

One such theorist was John Bowlby, who was intrigued but dissatisfied with the Kleinian ORT
primarily because it was lacking in empirical potential. Bowlby attempted to incorporate an
evolutionary perspective with the ORT to correct this drawback and change the trajectory of the type
of research being conducted on it (Feist, Feist & Roberts, 2018). The birth of bowlby’s attachment
theory rooted from his observations of the common sequence of reactions both primate and human
infants exhibit when separated from a primary caregiver. Bowlby’s attachment theory consisted of
three stages of separation anxiety namely; the protest stage, despair stage and detachment stage.

Bowlby’s aim to coax an empirical direction for research in child attachment was successful because
soon after Mary Ainsworth designed an experiment to detect types of attachment styles between an
infant and a primary caregiver. This experiment is famously known as the strange situation (Feist et
al., 2018). The experiment consisted of laboratory sessions that involved separating the infant from
his mother strategically. It revealed three attachment style ratings: secure, anxious-resistant and
anxious avoidant. Relating this idea back to Klein, Scharff (2005) interestingly associated the role that
quality of primary identification and early attachments played in determining the pathological or
successful transition from paranoid schizoid position to the depressive position. He suggested that
secure attachment could assist in overcoming adaptive challenges despite intense anxious feelings.

Margaret Mahler was another crucial American psychologist who was a pivotal influence on ORT.
She suggested that a new-born undergoes three major stages before he attains psychological birth
followed by individuation. The first stage was normal autism, that referred to the period starting from
birth to age 3-4. Mahler strongly disagreed with klein, regarding the infant being anxious and
terrified. She noted that new-born children tend to sleep for long hours and usually exhibit little spurs
of tension. She saw neonates as unbothered and unaware of any external objects i.e. she termed this
stage as “objectless”. The second major development stage Mahler proposed was normal
symbiosis. In this stage the neonate acknowledges the importance of his primary caregiver and his
inability to survive independently of her. The last stage in Mahler’s theory is the separation-
individuation stage during which the child achieves individuation by psychologically separating from
his primary care giver. Although Mahler largely contradicted Klein’s concepts in ORT, some
similarities that are prevalent amongst most OR theorists are apparent between their work too. Mills
(2006) pointed out that Klein’s schizoparanoid position could be linked to the starting of symbiosis
especially with the mother’s breast playing the central role in the neonates life. He also believed that
the depressive position corresponded with the phase that lied right before symbiosis ended and the
separation began.

Finally, Kohut firmly agreed with Klein regarding human relatedness being the centre of personality
over inherent instinctual biological drives. His theory was also in harmony with Klein’s concerning
the crucial role of interpersonal relations that the neonate forms not only for survival but for
fulfilment of psychological needs. However, Kohut’s extension of ORT focused on the evolution of
self from undifferentiated entity to an individual personality significantly more than other OR
theorists (Feist et al., 2018). He also saw infants as narcissistic as a result of being treated with utmost
care and warmth from their parents. He believed a child only cared about his own wishes and needs
and specified two major narcissistic needs: exhibition of grandiose self and wanting to acquire a
glorified image of parents.

In conclusion, Klein’s ORT provided a radical perspective at the time when Freud’s psychoanalytic
perspective on infant development was dominant, diversified the literature and understanding on how
a child’s psyche develops in relation to itself and others. Klein’s concept of ‘phantasies’ humanised
neonates instead of just seeing them as frustrated or gratified entities. Lastly, the influences of her
work are largely visible in our modern day understanding of how we have organised the behaviour of
infants and how they come to develop a sense of identity.
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