Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Klein: Object Relations
Theory
(^166) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
Key Terms and Concepts
- Object relations theories assume that the mother-child relationship
during the first 4 or 5 months is the most critical time for personality
development. - Klein believed that an important part of any relationship is the internal
psychic representationsof early significant objects, such as the mother’s
breast or the father’s penis. - Infants introjectthese psychic representations into their own psychic
structure and then projectthem onto an external object, that is, another
person. These internal pictures are not accurate representations of the other
person but are remnants of earlier interpersonal experiences. - The ego,which exists at birth, can sense both destructive and loving
forces, that is, both a nurturing and a frustrating breast. - To deal with the nurturing breast and the frustrating breast, infants split
these objects into good and bad while also splitting their own ego, giving
them a dual imageof self. - Klein believed that the superegocomes into existence much earlier than
Freud had speculated and that it grows along with the Oedipal process
rather than being a product of it. - During the early female Oedipus complex, the little girl adopts a feminine
position toward both parents. She has a positive feeling both for her
mother’s breasts and for her father’s penis, which she believes will feed her
with babies. - Sometimes the little girl develops hostility toward her mother, who she
fears will retaliate against her and rob her of her babies. - With most girls, however, the female Oedipus complex is resolved without
any antagonism or jealousy toward their mother.
160 Part II Psychodynamic Theories
acquired phylogenetic endowment places her theory even further in the direction
of unconscious determinants.
The emphasis that Klein placed on the death instinct and phylogenetic en-
dowment would seem to suggest that she saw biology as more important than en-
vironment in shaping personality. However, Klein shifted the emphasis from Freud’s
biologically based infantile stages to an interpersonal one. Because the intimacy
and nurturing that infants receive from their mother are environmental experiences,
Klein and other object relations theorists lean more toward social determinantsof
personality.
On the dimension of uniqueness versus similarities,object relations theorists
tend more toward similarities. As clinicians dealing mostly with disturbed patients,
Klein, Mahler, Kohut, and Bowlby limited their discussions to the distinction be-
tween healthy personalities and pathological ones and were little concerned with
differences among psychologically healthy personalities.