Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Klein: Object Relations
Theory
© The McGraw−Hill^157
Companies, 2009Chapter 5 Klein: Object Relations Theory 151interactions. Although many of her tenets rely on inferences gleaned from reactions
of preverbal infants, her ideas can easily be extended to adults. Any errors made dur-
ing the first 3 years—the time of psychological birth—may result in later regressions
to a stage when a person had not yet achieved separation from the mother and thus
a sense of personal identity.
Heinz Kohut’s View
Heinz Kohut (1913–1981) was born in Vienna to educated and talented Jewish par-
ents (Strozier, 2001). On the eve of World War II, he emigrated to England and, a
year later, he moved to the United States, where he spent most of his professional
life. He was a professional lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at the Univer-
sity of Chicago, a member of the faculty at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis,
and visiting professor of psychoanalysis at the University of Cincinnati. A neurolo-
gist and a psychoanalyst, Kohut upset many psychoanalysts in 1971 with his publi-
cation of The Analysis of the Self,which replaced the ego with the concept of self. In
addition to this book, aspects of his self psychology are found in The Restoration of
the Self(1977) and The Kohut Seminars(1987), edited by Miriam Elson and pub-
lished after Kohut’s death.
More than the other object relations theorists, Kohut emphasized the process
by which theself evolves from a vague and undifferentiated image to a clear and pre-
cise sense of individual identity. As did other object relations theorists, he focused
on the early mother-child relationship as the key to understanding later development.
Kohut believed that human relatedness, not innate instinctual drives, are at the core
of human personality.
According to Kohut, infants require adult caregivers not only to gratify physi-
cal needs but also to satisfy basic psychological needs. In caring for both physical
and psychological needs, adults, or selfobjects,treat infants as if they had a sense
of self. For example, parents will act with warmth, coldness, or indifference de-
pending in part on their infant’s behavior.
Through the process of empathic interaction,
the infant takes in the selfobject’s responses as
pride, guilt, shame, or envy—all attitudes that
eventually form the building blocks of the self.
Kohut (1977) defined the self as “the center of
the individual’s psychological universe” (p. 311).
The self gives unity and consistency to one’s ex-
periences, remains relatively stable over time,
and is “the center of initiative and a recipient of
impressions” (p. 99). The self is also the child’s
focus of interpersonal relations, shaping how he
or she will relate to parents and other selfobjects.
Kohut (1971, 1977) believed that infants
are naturally narcissistic. They are self-centered,
looking out exclusively for their own welfare
and wishing to be admired for who they are and
what they do. The early self becomes crystallized Heinz Kohut