TOP: MELANIE KLEIN'S OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY
Life of Melanie Klein
- 1882-1960 | Vienna, Austria
- Parents: Dr. Moris Reizes, Libussa Deutsch
- Siblings: Emily, Emmanuel, Sidone
- Known for: Child-analysis, Play Therapy,
Object Relations Theory
Personal Life
- Aspired to be a doctor
- Distant relationship with father (doctor as
well)
- Adored her mother & siblings
- Entered a loveless marriage
o No nurturing loving relationship
with her children
o Depression
- Saved by psychoanalysis
- Sándor Ferenczi
Work
- Discovered the works of Freud
- Devoted her life in enriching it
- Subject matter: Infants and children
- Child Analysis
- Play therapy (opposed by Anna Freud)
- Object relations theory – emphasizes on
mother & child relationship
- Theory is made from studying infants.
- Distant and cold relationship with the father
- Adored mother and siblings
- At young age, entered loveless marriage
(Frustrated, bored, depressed)
- With 3 children (but did not establish a nurturing/
loving relationship)
- Sandor Ferenczi – Psychoanalysis
- Psychoanalysis → Child analysis (used play therapy
– to understand child’s unconscious, observe how
children interact with the arrangement of toys)
- Anna Freud believed that children does not have a
well-formed unconscious, so it is limited to study.
- Self-declared as a child psychoanalyst
OBJECT RELATION THEORY (overview)
- How we develop our consciousness in
relation to the objects around?
Objects: human contact during infancy
- Infants have a different form of reality,
cannot process that they are surrounded
by people
- Considers parts then the whole
- Emphasizes interpersonal relations
especially between mother and child
- Earliest childhood experiences are
important in the formation of our
emotional world.
o As early as infancy, personality is
formed.
Positions – ways of dealing with the objects
- Proposed different positions instead of
using stages of development because an
individual can go back and forth within
positions
Object relations theory is high:
- Determinism
- Causality
- Unconscious
- Social influences
In understanding relationships provides insights
with the personality. Examining individuals on
how they think of other people, examining of
infants would provide them already on how their
personalities would be formed
How is it different from Freud's theory?
- Less on biologically based drives and more
on importance of interpersonal
relationships
- More maternal, emphasizing the intimacy
and nurturing of the mother.
- Prime motive of human behavior: Human
Contact & Relatedness (not sex or
aggression)
PHANTASY LIFE OF AN INFANT
- Phantasy – Psychic representations of
unconscious id instincts
- Basic assumptions as that the infant, even
at birth, possesses an active phantasy life
(different from conscious fantasies of
children & adults)
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- Infants have 2 worlds: Inner [Psychic]
Reality and External Reality
o The internal world is built through
objects and comes to be
experienced as real and concrete
as the outside world.
- Already possess the concepts of good and
bad
o How do they acquire that?
Through objects that they interact
with.
FREUD
Humans have innate drives and instincts
KLEIN
These drives must have some object!
OBJECTS
- Infants relate their dries to parts than
whole; they can’t fully grasp the idea that
they are surrounded by people. They are
just surrounded by objects with this it
allows them to have an alternative form
of reality and independent perspective of
how they perceive these objects.
- Early development, children relate to
parts rather than complete objects =
independent POV
- From early infancy, children relate their
drives to these external objects both in
fantasy and reality.
o Primary object: The Mother
INFANT’S REPRESENTATION OF THEIR MOTHERS
- Representation: Just a pair of breasts that
appear and disappear.
- All infants’ experiences are equal intense
pain and equal intense pleasure
- When it’s present = calm & satisfaction,
feelings of well-being.
- When it’s missing = starved, enraged,
terrified, vengeful
- This relationship with the breast serves a
protype of the child’s relationship to other
people.
- The infant assumes breast as two
separate kinds: Good Breast and Bad
Breast.
TOP: MELANIE KLEIN'S OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY
The Good Breast
- "The Ideal Breast"
- Benign intensity
- Nourishment, care, love, comfort,
gratification
- Infant devours and harbors
The Bad Breast
- "The Persecutory breast”
- Hated with a passion
- Provides frustrations
- Incapable of love, care, and comfort
- Infant to develop the urge to destroy it by
biting tearing it.
SPLIT-OBJECT IMAGE
- Viewing a person in extreme positive and
negative ways
- Infant able to split the person into two
different persons.
o They are either innately good or
bad.
- "Black-and-white thinking"
o Simplistic view on people and not
really seeing people as complex
and multi-dimensional
- As the infant matures, the unconscious
phantasy with the breast continues to
impact to their psychic life.
- Eventually, the split HEALS thought:
o Time and Healthy Development
OBJECT INTEGRATION
- The level of unification of an internalized
relationship – finally internalizing the
relationship with the mother.
- Seeing other people as complex and
multidimensional
- It lets the infant realizes that mothers are
generally caring and moral but can also do
mistakes and hurtful things.
- With object integration, this introduces a
psychological achievement called
Ambivalence.
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CONCEPT OF AMBIVALENCE
- Psychological achievement
- First marker on the path to genuine
maturity
- The child can grasp the concept of
INTENTION and EFFECT
o What the mother wanting for it
versus how the infant felt at her
care.
o But also, for the other
relationships.
The split can be dissolved or healed when the
infant is able to integrate the objects around him
or finally realizing the concept of ambivalence
when it comes to relationships.
- As ambivalence varies to infants, Klein
proposed positions as where infant might
be. Because infants engage to basic
conflicts (all unconscious concepts). But
the infant is always in between these, she
identified positions instead of stage of
development because infants have the
tendency to go back and forth between
positions: Paranoid-Schizoid position and
Depressive position
POSITIONS
- Infants engage in basic conflicts (good and
bad, life and death, love and hate,
creativity, and destruction)
For Klein, development proceeds into two
positions:
1. Paranoid-Schizoid Position
2. Depressive Position
PARANOID-SCHIZOID POSITION (3 to 4 months)
(-) AMBIVALENCE – Unable to tolerate the
slightest ambivalence
o SPLIT-IMAGE – “The Good Breast"
and "The Bad Breast"
o ORGANIZING EXPERIENCES –
Paranoid feelings of being
persecuted
TOP: MELANIE KLEIN'S OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY
o EGO'S PERCEPTION OF EXTERNAL
WORLD – Subjective and fantasy
rather than objective and reality
- This is more primitive; infants would
idealize and escape to preserve their
sense of innocence.
- And if an individual is stuck to paranoid-
schizoid position, they would grow up as
toxic individuals and maybe destructive to
other people
- 3 to 4 months
DEPRESSIVE POSITION (5 to 6 months)
- When the individual be able to internalize
the relationship.
(+) AMBIVALENCE – internalized the relationship
o OBJECT INTEGRATION – Can view
an object as incorporated both
good and bad feelings
o FEELINGS DEVELOPED (towards
the object) – Anxiety, fear, even
guilt over the "objects"
▪ Anxiety and fear because,
when they were able to
internalize their
relationship with the
object, there is now fear of
loosing that object, the
sense of importance.
▪ Guilt due to wanting to
destroy that object before.
Destroy the bad breast.
- More of sober and melancholic realization
of reality where the child discovers
unconsciously that reality is a lot more
complicated and less neat. Life is not
simple, and all relationships are
ambivalent, and people are complex and
multi-dimensional, it is more of accepting
of that ambivalence. Accepting of the
reality.
o ACCEPTANCE – Melancholic
realizations of the complexity of
relationships and growing up
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o If the infant is feeling bad, the
parent’s images maybe be bad
bread breast of evil penis.
- They use projections to get reed of them.

3. Splitting
- Primitive capacity to mentally separate
objects to good and bad parts
- The mental separation of objects into
“good” and “bad” parts and the
subsequent repression of the “bad,” or
anxiety-provoking aspects.
- To have both images is not something the
infant can’t tolerate.
PSYCHIC DEFENSE MECHANISMS
o The infant splits it but it also spits
- Infants adapt psychic defense
their ego thus it reveals to
mechanisms to protect their ego against
themselves the good-me and the
anxiety aroused by their own destructive
bad-me which enables them to
fantasies.
deal with both pleasurable and
1. Introjection
destructive impulses towards
- Infants fantasize taking into their bodies
external objects.
the perceptions and experiences they had
- First experienced in the primary caregiver
with an external object.
- It occurs when an infant can’t keep two
o Mother’s breast or milk bottle
contradictory thoughts or feelings in mind
- When good objects are introjected, it
at the same time.
helps them protect ego from anxiety.
- When bad objects are introjected, they
4. Projective identification
become internal persecutors (leaving
- When an infant project an undesirable
o Bad breast, in order for the infant
object unto another person & eventually
to gain control over them, they
introjects them back to himself in
become internal persecutors
distorted in a distorted form.
leaving terrifying residues
- By taking the undesirable object back into
expressed in infant’s dreams.
themselves, infants feel that they gain
- Used to take in objects (good or bad)
control over it.
2. Projection
INTERNALIZATIONS (from Freud)
- The infant’s fantasy that his own feelings
- The psychological framework that the
and impulses reside in another person and
infant’s mind organizes from introjections
not within one’s body.
of the external world
- Introjection takes in. projection gets ride
of both good and bad objects.
3 internalizations:
- Infants project images onto external
1. Ego
objects, especially their parents.
- An infant’s most primitive sense of self.
o Mothers both of object of pleasure
o Compared to Freud, Ego is
and terror depending on the
activated until the 3rd – 4th year of
current impulse of the infant.
the child.
o If infants are feeling good, parents
- Reaches maturity at a much earlier stage
are images of nourishing milk
(1st month to 3rd year of the child) sensing

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both destructive and loving forces and
managing them psychologically
o For Freud the young child is
dominated by the Id, but Klein
ignored the Id and argues the
Ego’s early ability to sense both
destructive and pleasurable/loving
forces and to manage them
psychologically by defense
mechanisms.
- Although Ego is mostly unorganized at
birth, it is strong enough to feel anxiety,
to use defense mechanisms, and to form
early object relations.
2. Superego
- An internal structure or part of the infant
self that reflects the self, makes
judgements, exerts moral pressure, and is
the seat of conscience, guilt, and self-
esteem.
Klein’s superego differs from Freud in 3
respects:
a. It emerges much earlier in life
b. It is not an outgrowth of the Oedipus
complex
c. It is much harsher and crueler.
- The more mature Superego produces
feelings of inferiority and guilt, but also
argued that the earlier stage of superego
produces not guilt but terror.
- Young children fear being cut up and torn
into pieces, fears that are greatly out of
proportion to any realistic dangers. This
reaction is from the ego’s aggressive self-
defense against self-destructive
tendencies.
- This early defense of ego lays the
foundations of development of the super
ego. That is why infants sometimes have
disproportionate terror to anything
foreign or unfamiliar like sudden sounds
or new faces, new sensation, they cry.
3. Oedipus Complex
- It involves wish-fulfilling fantasies of the
death of the same-sex parent, with
usurpation of their place in the couple.
- It can happen in both male and female
infants.
- The male’s and female’s Oedipal
development it begins with the mother’s
breast
- Female’s oedipal development, the
mother’s breast is seen first as a good and
bad reality, at 6th month the infant she
begins to have more positive relationship
with the breast and later sees the mother
as full of good things.
- She then fantasies that her father’s penis
feeds her mothers with good things
including babies in her womb, then she
then creates positive relationship with it
and at this stage, the female infant is in
more feminine position.
- Under less ideal circumstances, female
infant sees mothers as a rival, and she
fantasizes rubbing her mother of the
father’s penis and stealing her babies
- For the male oedipal development, it
starts with seeing the mother’s breast as
both good and bad. Then during early
months, the boy shifts some of his oral
desires from his mother’s breast to his
father’s penis.
- And this time, the male infant is in his
feminine position. And he adapts a
passive homosexual attitude towards his
father. But he since he also enjoys
heterosexual oral nourishment from the
breast, he develops a love and hate
relationship with the father’s penis.
- The boy’s fear of castration by the
vengeful father and the girl’s fear of loss
of love from the mother lead to the
abandonment of these wishes and to
installation of the superego.
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While Klein admits Freudian influence, her idea of
Oedipus complex departs from him in 4 ways:
1. It begins at a much earlier age reaches
climax to 3 to 4 years old.
o For Freud it begins during the
phallic stage (4 to 5 years of age)
2. A significant part of it represents the
child’s fear of retaliation from his
parents.
3. Children’s retention of positive
feelings towards both parents.
4. In its’ early stage, it establishes a
positive attitude with the good object
and avoidance of the bad.
KLEIN’S PSYCHOTHERAPY (Psychoanalysis of
Children)
- Klein developed the play therapy
technique arguing that children expresses
their conscious and unconscious wishes
through toys and playthings.
- Children are provided with a variety of
small toys, pencil and paper, paint,
crayons, etc.
- Disturbed children foster negative
transference and fantasies in the process
- The aim of the therapy is the reduce
depressive anxieties and persecutory fears
and to mitigate the harshness of
internalized objects.
- The children are encouraged to re-
experience early emotions and fantasies
and with the therapist’s guidance point
out the difference between reality and
fantasy.
What can we acquire from this theory?
KLEIN’S VIEW OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
- She wanted to understand how human
beings evolved from primitive pleasure-
seeking impulses of early infancy to the
more mature adaptation of later life
- She wants to know what might go wrong
along the way and give rise to necrotic
adaptations of adults.
- Object relations theory generally argues
that the quality of children’s relationships
with their caregivers is internalized as a
model for later interpersonal relationships
- Any dysfunction/trauma in the internal
dynamics of an infant growing as a child
and relating to his world can either
enhance or disrupt later adult
relationships.
- “Basic Fault”
o A lack of connection between the
child and the mother that breeds
neurotic adaptations in adult life.
▪ Insecurities
▪ Inability to form lasting
relationships
o Example: first experiences is
unconditional love but if not given,
may give negative impact which
affects the child through his life.
- “Defense mechanism override”
o Misplaced introjections and
projections
o Regress splitting
o Example: Defense mechanisms are
not our natural mechanisms but
are coping but ones you used the
defense mechanisms are your
natural mechanisms, it blind you
to reality.
- “Object-Relations relationship”
o When adults related people with
objects. You use things and love
people dapat. People are not
materials, they are human beings,
be respected and loved.
- Understanding one’s relationships would
provide insight with their personality
o This theory emphasized the
relationship between mother and
child. And as early as infancy, that
relationship can already stem the
infant’s personality as it grows up.
- Children are deeply wise and enlightened
about the adult world
- Unusual yet useful means of what it takes
to be a proper grown up
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- Coming to terms that ambivalence of
relationships is part of growing up
- Focuses on internal representations of
one’s relationships and how they shape
their thoughts, feelings, and behavior
towards others and the self
- One’s inner world is composed of
representations of others
- Based on careful observations of infants
Freud 4 to 6 years old, Klein 4-6 months
after birth
- Important objects (breast) great impact
on infants
- And lastly this theory emphasizes on the
psychological achievement of
ambivalence as the marker to genuine
maturity
- And from these simple points, may it
provide means for us to reflect on the
theory and be helpful for us to remember
one of Klein’s major contribution to
psychoanalysis.