Later Views on

Object Relations
Donald Winnicott
(1986-1971)
• A child physician in England
• “There is no such thing as a baby.”
• Mother-child dyad
• Introjection & projection for the infant to
deal with fear and frustrations coming from
the world
• No to a primary aggressive instinct
• Held that the maternal environment is
critical to development
Important Concepts
#1. The “good-enough
mother”
• An ordinary woman or (ahem, a single father)
whose maternal instincts for her baby are not
unduly hampered by her own conflicts (or the
‘expert’ advice of others)

• Protects her infant from primitive anxieties: lets

the baby enjoy the illusion of omnipotence;
also, when necessary, provides for
disillusionment (reality-sense) w/o despair
#2. Impingement
• Upon the child’s otherwise natural
potential for healthy growth

• When the child has to deal w/ stresses

that are developmentally out of tune w/ his
developmental level, allowing the child’s
internal needs to build to frustrating levels
 Impingement, more
• One time failures
• The continued stresses cause a split w/in
the self between healthy potential (the true
self) and a compliant self, falsely
precocious (the false self)
 #3. The infant’s frustration
with reality
• The infant learned about reality after his
narcissistic wishes failed to be met

• Mother’s vital role

 #4. Role of transitional objects during
our first encounters w/ reality
• During the transitional stage between
narcissistic omnipotence & mundane
reality
• Devices (such as a soft toy, piece of
blanket, or a thumb) w/c help bridge the
gap between the created & found, internal
& external, and are a preparation for the
later use of symbols
 Role of transitional objects during
our first encounters w/ reality, more
• Important when the child emerges from
the symbiotic relationship, begins to
distinguish between himself & his mom
• The transitional object represents both—it
has mother’s smell, but it stays w/ him. It
remains under his control while mom is
not around.
 #5. Question:
How precisely does the
mother’s view of the world
become impressed
on the infant?
#5.1. The good-enough mother’s first role
for her newborn is largely one of
“HOLDING”
#5.2. MIRRORING
– Mother as the child’s first mirror. Her mirroring
role is vital for the child’s psychical
development
– If mom is mirroring back depression,
psychosis, etc., a child must defend against
these painful reflections through resorting to a
False Self.
 #6. True self
• Is the instinctive core of the personality
• It is this nascent force that must be
respected & helped to develop.
• When the true self feels too threatened to
reveal itself, false self may be created.
 #7. False self
• Its primary function is to protect the true self
from “insult, hurt, wounding, or even
destruction.”
• Being an unconscious process, the false self can
be mistaken for the true self. It can give the
appearance of success, and of social gains, but
there will also be unreality feelings,
depersonalization, the sense of not really being
alive, that happiness doesn’t or can’t really exist.
 False self, more
• Compare w/ W. R. D. Fairbairn’s “the schizoid
personality” w/ its over valuation of the internal,
and inability to enter into meaningful
relationships w/ other people.
• Both seek to explain a pathological state
wherein one has erected a false inner world to
replace the dangerous one outside us.
• Both forget that this world is merely our creation
& come to believe that it is the world.
 #8. Winnicott’s treatment
• Become aware of the unconscious
conflicts.
• Recover repressed fears.
• Help to find new & more realistic ways of
dealing w/ the real world.
• Strengthen the ego, enabling the client to
make real life choices.
 Winnicott’s treatment, more
• Therapist is used as a stand-in; assumes
a holding role particularly w/ psychotic or
borderline patients

– The Squiggle Game

– Management as more supportive, loving, and
caring
 Margaret Schonberger
Mahler (1897-1985)
• Hungarian; received a medical degree
from the University of Vienna in 1923
• Based her theories from observing both
disturbed & normal children as they
bonded w/ their moms
• Psychological birth begins during the
first weeks of postnatal life and continues
for the next three years or so.

– It refers to the child becoming an individual

separate from her primary caregiver, an
accomplishment that ultimately leads to a
sense of identity.
3 Major Developmental Stages
and 4 Substages
 #1. Normal Autism
• From birth until about age 3-4 weeks
• The newborn satisfies various needs w/in
the all-powerful protective orbit of a
mother’s care, a neonate’s sense of
omnipotence.
 Normal Autism, more
• Unlike Klein who saw a newborn as being
terrified, Mahler pointed to the relatively
long period of sleep & general lack of
tension in a neonate, a period of absolute
primary narcissism in w/c the infant is
unaware of any other person. Thus, it is
an “objectless” stage.
 #2. Normal Symbiosis
• As infants gradually realize that they
cannot satisfy their own needs, they begin
to recognize their primary caregiver and to
seek a symbiotic relationship w/ her.
 Normal Symbiosis, more
• Begins around 4th or 5th week of age
• Reaches its zenith during the 4th or 5th
month
• Here, the infant “behaves and functions as
though he and his mother were an
omnipotent system—a dual unity w/in one
common boundary.”
 Normal Symbiosis, more
• It is not a true symbiosis (a mutual cuing
of infant and mom)
– E.g., cues of hunger, pain, pleasure from the
infant w/c mom recognizes and responds to
w/ her own cues of holding, feeding, or smiling
 Normal Symbiosis, more
• Child can now recognize mom’s face.
• However, object relations have not yet
began. Both mom and infant are still
“preobjects”.
• Older children & even adults sometimes
regress to this stage, seeking the strength
& safety of their mother’s care.
#3. Separation-Individuation Stage
• Spans the period from about 4th or 5th
month of age until about the 30th to 36th
month
• When children become psychologically
separated from their mothers & begin to
develop feelings of personal identity
Separation-Individuation
Stage, more
• Because children no longer experience a
dual unity w/ their mom, they must
surrender their delusion of omnipotence
and face their vulnerability to external
threats.
• Young children experience the external
world as being more dangerous than it
was during the first 2 stages.
 #4. Four Overlapping Substages

2. Differentiation
3. Practicing Substage
4. Rapprochement
5. Libidinal Object Constancy
#4.1. Differentiation

• Lasts from about the 5th month until the 7th

to 10th month
• Marked by a bodily breaking away from
the mother infant symbiotic orbit
• Children smile in response to their own
mother, indicating a bond w/ a specific
other person.
 Differentiation, more
• Psychologically healthy infants who
expand their world beyond the mother will
be curious about strangers and will inspect
them
• Unhealthy infants will fear strangers and
recoil from them.
#4.2. Practicing Substage
• Infants physically begin to move away
from their moms by crawling and walking,
a period from about the 7th-10th month of
age to about the 15th or 16th month.
• Easily distinguish their bodies from their
moms, establish a specific bond w/ their
moms, and begin to develop an
autonomous ego
Practicing Substage, more

• During the early part of this stage, they do

not like to lose sight of their mom; they
follow her w/ their eyes & show distress
when she is away.
• Later, they begin to walk & take in the
outside world, w/c they experience as
fascinating & exciting.
 #4.3. Rapprochement
• From about 16-25 months of ages, the
children desire to bring their moms &
themselves back together both physically
& psychologically.
• Children want to share w/ mom every
newly acquired skill & every experience.
 Rapprochement, more
• More likely to show separation anxiety
during the rapprochement stage rather
than the previous period
• Child’s increased cognitive skills make
them more aware of their own
separateness.
 Rapprochement, more
• Because these attempts are never
completely successful, children of this age
often fight dramatically w/ their moms, a
condition called the rapprochement
crisis.
#4.4. Libidinal Object
Constancy

• The final subphase of the separation-

individuation process
• Approximates the 3rd year of life
• Children must develop a constant inner
representation of their mother so that they
can tolerate being physically separate
from her.
 Libidinal Object
Constancy, more
• If libidinal object constancy is not
developed, children continue to depend on
their mom’s physical presence for their
own security.
• Besides gaining some degree of object
constancy, children must consolidate their
individuality—learn to function w/o their
mom & to develop other object
relationships
Heinz Kohut
(1913-1981)

• Born in Vienna
• A neurologist & psychoanalyst, he upset
his colleagues when he replaced the ego
w/ the concept of the self in 1971 w/ his
publication of The Analysis of the Self.
Then, in The Restoration of the Self
(1977).
• Emphasized the process by w/c the self
evolves from a vague & undifferentiated
image to a clear & precise sense of
individual identity

• Human relatedness, not instinctual drives,

are at the core of human personality.
• Infants require adult caregivers not only to
gratify physical needs, but also to satisfy
basic psychological needs.
• In the process, adults or selfobjects treat
infants as if they had a sense of self.
• Through the emphatic interaction w/
selfobjects, the infant takes in the
selfobjects’ responses of pride, guilt,
shame, or envy—all attitudes that
eventually form the building blocks of the
self.
 The Self
• “the center of the individual’s
psychological universe”
• Gives unity & consistency to one’s
experiences
• Remains relatively stable over time
• “center of initiative and a recipient of
impressions”
 The Self, more
• Is the child’s focus of interpersonal
relations, shaping how he will relate to
parents & other selfobjects
• Kohut believed that infants are naturally
narcissistic & self-centered, looking out
exclusively for their own welfare & wishing
to be admired for who they are & what
they do.
 Two Basic Narcissistic Needs

• The need to exhibit the grandiose self

• The need to acquire an idealized image

of one or both parents
• Both narcissisitc self-images are
necessary for healthy personality dev’t.
• If unaltered, they result in a pathologically
narcissistic adult personality
• Grandiosity must change into a realistic
view of the self.
• Idealized parent image must grow into a
realistic picture of parents.
• The 2 self-images should not entirely
disappear.
• The healthy adult continues to have
positive attitudes toward the self &
continues to see good qualities in parents
or parent substitutes.
• But a narcissistic adult does not transcend
these infantile needs & continues to be
self-centered & to see the rest of the world
as an admiring audience.
Otto Kernberg (1928- )
• Born in Vienna
• Received a medical degree from the University
of Chile in 1953
• Observed mostly older patients
• Healthy object relations result in an integrated
ego, a punishing superego, a stable self-
concept, and fulfilling interpersonal relations
• Inadequate early object relations led to
contradictory ego states & various levels of adult
psychopathology.
 Internalized Object Relations
• Are structured units found in all levels of
personality organization, such as self-
image, an object-image, and a certain
affect that colors the self-image and the
object-image
• Splitting the ego enables the infant to
handle contradictory aspects of the self.
Internalized Object Relations, more
• Continual splitting in the adult would
represent a defect in the ego.
• Linked split-off ego states to the defense
mechanism of introjection and
identification
 Introjection
• As the “swallowing whole” of an object
image, and the affect generated by the
interaction of the object and the self

• At this early stage of dev’t, introjected

images are undifferentiated and kept apart
by the splitting process.
 Introjection, more
• The affective portion of each introjection is
important because it helps the child
synthesize images w/ similar feeling tones.
• Ex: oral gratification, nurturance, mother-
child contact all fuse to become the good
internal object
 Identification
• The higher form of introjection
• 2nd level of internalized object relations
• As infants mature cognitively, they acquire
the capacity to see themselves & their
mother as having specific social roles.
• The various roles played by the child
eventually lead to consistent patterns of
behavior w/c facilitate ego identity.
Identification, more

• Gives a sense of continuity of the self

• Organizes other self-images
• Allows one to see object-images more
consistently
• Facilitates stable interpersonal relations
• Is the highest level of organization of
the self
 Identification, more
• Leads to an integrated ego dev’t & a
mature functioning superego
• In 1998, applied his theory of individual
dev’t to groups & organizations
• These units have the same problems of
identity, disintegration & pathology as
shown in individuals
• Noted for his effective treatment of
borderline PD’s.
John Bowlby
(1907-1990)
• Born in London
• Studied in Cambridge
• Began training in child psychiatry w/ Klein
• 1950’s became dissatisfied w/ the object
relations perspective for its lack of theory
for motivation & lack of empiricism
• Used his knowledge of ethology &
evolutionary theory esp. Konrad Lorenz’
theory of early bonding to a mother-figure
 Bowlby’s Attachment Theory
• Taking childhood as its starting point & then
extrapolating forward to adulthood
• Believed that attachment formed in childhood
has an impt. impact on adulthood  the
importance of studying childhood directly and
not relying on distorted retrospective accounts
from adults
• Studied both human & primate infants go thru a
clear sequence of rxns when separated from
primary caregivers
 3 Main Stages of
Separation Anxiety

2. Protest stage

4. Despair

6. Detachment
 2 Fundamental Assumptions for
Bowlby’s Theory

1. A responsive & accessible caregiver (usu.

the mom) must create a secure base for
the child. If the child finds her dependable,
she develops confidence & security in
exploring the world
 2 Fundamental Assumptions for
Bowlby’s Theory, more

2. A bonding relationship or lack thereof

becomes internalized & serves as a
mental working model on w/c future
friendships & love relationships are built.
 2 Fundamental Assumptions for
Bowlby’s Theory, more
• Attachment style is a reciprocal relationship bet.
2 people & not a trait given to the infant by the
caregiver.
• Mary Ainsworth (1919-1999)
& associates developed the
Strange Situation to measure
the types of attachment styles.
They found the secure,
anxious-resistant &
anxious-avoidant styles