Object Relations Theory

Melanie Klein
Melanie Klein
• Born on March 30, 1882, in Vienna, Austria.
• In 1903, she married Arthur Klein and relocated to Budapest. They had three children, born in 1904,
1907, and 1914.
• Klein's first personal experience in the field of psychoanalysis began when she sought treatment for
herself after her mother died in 1914. Earlier in her youth, Klein’s siblings died: her brother died
when she was 20, and her sister died when Klein was 4 years old. Klein was in treatment with
Sandor Ferenczi between 1914 and 1917.
• After her own encounter with psychoanalysis, Klein began studying and soon became a clinician,
specializing in the treatment of children, beginning with her own.
• Klein’s daughter, Melitta Schmideberg, conflicted with her mother publicly while they were
members of the British Psychoanalytic Society. The two became estranged and Schmideberg
refused to reconcile with her mother.
• Klein was a pioneer in the treatment of children.
How did Klein Disagree with Freud?

Melanie Klein Sigmund Freud

Places emphasis on interpersonal Places emphasis on biologically
relationship based drives

Emphasizes the intimacy and Emphasizes the power and control of

nurturing of the mother the father

Behavior is motivated by human Behavior is motivated by sexual

contact and relationships energy (the libido)

Klein stressed the importance of the Freud emphasized the first 4 or 6

first 4 or 6 months years of life
 In order to understand Klein,
we have to be “babies”

“ What’s yours is mine;

What’s mine is my own;
What’s yours is half mine;
And half of the other half is mine;
So all is mine.”
Phantasies
• Infants processed their anxieties around feeding and relating
to others as objects and part-objects.
• Klein believed that ego formation begins from the moment of
birth when the newborn attempts to relate to the world through
part-objects – thus the object ‘mother’ becomes a part-object
‘breast’.

Good Breast / Bad Breast

2 Phases of Development
Early development is about how the baby to negotiates a world that causes anxiety

Both phases are different in terms of:

1. Experiencing anxiety
2. Dealing with anxiety
3. Managing anxiety

She called these two states of mind ‘positions’ rather than ‘stages’, because she said
that they are not stages we progress through, but positions, or ways of being, that we
oscillate between throughout development and into adult life.
Paranoid Schizoid Position
• First four to six months of age
• The baby must deal with immense anxiety arising from the trauma of birth, hunger
and frustration. The baby, in his phantasy, splits the mother’s breast into the Good
Breast that feeds and nourishes, and the Bad Breast that withholds and persecutes
the baby.

SPLITTING
• Splitting occurs when a person (especially a child) can't keep two contradictory
thoughts or feelings in mind at the same time, and therefore keeps the conflicting
feelings apart and focuses on just one of them.
• Splitting as a defence is a way of managing anxiety by protecting the ego from
negative emotions. It is often employed in trauma, where a split-off part holds the
unbearable feelings.
Paranoid Schizoid Position
Introjection
• The baby internalises or introjects the objects – literally by swallowing the nourishing
breast milk, symbol of life and love
• experiencing hunger pains and its own aggressive anger against the withholding Bad
Breast inside its body. 

The infant’s unconscious works to keep the Good Breast (and all it symbolises; love, the
life instinct) safe from the Bad Breast (feelings of hate and aggression, the death
instinct). Thus, the paranoid-schizoid defence mechanism is set in motion.
Paranoid Schizoid Position
The unconscious process of splitting, projection and
introjection is an attempt to ease paranoid anxieties of
persecution, internally and externally. Unbearable
negative feelings as well as positive loving emotions
are projected onto external objects, as in Freud.
 In later life, we see the same process in adults
projecting their unwanted fears and hatred onto other
people, resulting in racism, war and genocide. We also
see it when people employ positive thinking or
conversely negative biases, seeing only what they
want to see in order to feel happy and safe.
DepressivePosition
It is a term that she uses to describe the developmental stage that occurs in an infant’s
first year, after the primal Paranoid-Schizoid Position.
• The Depressive Position first manifests during weaning – around three to six months
– when a child comes to terms with the reality of the world and its place in it.
• Part-objects are now viewed as whole people, who have their own relationships and
feelings; absence is experienced as a loss rather than a persecutory attack. Instead of
anger, the baby feels grief. It is at around three months that a baby begins to cry real
tears.
• In the Depressive Position, a child learns to relate to its objects in a completely new
way. It has less need for splitting, introjection and projection as defences and begins
to view inner and outer reality more accurately.
DepressivePosition
• In the Depressive Position, a child learns to relate to its objects in a completely new
way. It has less need for splitting, introjection and projection as defences and begins
to view inner and outer reality more accurately. Part-objects are now viewed as whole
people, who have their own relationships and feelings; absence is experienced as a
loss rather than a persecutory attack. Instead of anger, the baby feels grief. It is at
around three months that a baby begins to cry real tears.