Chapter 5. Klein: Object Relations Theory Flashcards
The ___________ of Melanie Klein was built on careful observations of young children.
object relations theory
3 difference between ORT and Freud’s instinct theory:
- ORT places less emphasis on biologically based drives and more importance on consistent patterns
of interpersonal relationships. - As opposed to Freud’s rather paternalistic theory that emphasizes the power and control of the father, ORT tends to be more maternal, stressing the intimacy and nurturing of the mother.
- Object relations theorists generally see human contact and relatedness—not sexual pleasure—as the prime motive of human behavior.
The _______ of the drive is any person, part of a person, or thing through which the aim is satisfied.
object
True or False. Infants do not begin life with a blank slate but with an inherited predisposition to reduce the anxiety they experience as a result of the conflict produced by the forces of the life instinct and the power of the death instinct.
True
Are psychic representations of unconscious id instincts.
phantasies
Are ways of dealing with both internal and external objects.
positions
Why did Klein chose the term “position” rather than “stage of development”?
to indicate that positions alternate back and forth
To control the good breast and to fight off its persecutors, the infant adopts what Klein called the __________.
paranoid-schizoid position
A way of organizing experiences that includes both paranoid feelings of being persecuted and a splitting of
internal and external objects into the good and the bad.
paranoid-schizoid position
The feelings of anxiety over losing a loved object coupled with a sense of guilt for wanting to destroy that object constitute what Klein called the __________.
depressive position
4 Psychic Defense Mechanisms
- introjection
- projection
- splitting
- projective identification
Through this, infants fantasize taking into their body
those perceptions and experiences that they have had with the external object, originally the mother’s breast.
introjection
It is the fantasy that one’s own feelings and impulses actually reside in another person and not within one’s body.
Projection
Infants can only manage the good and bad aspects of themselves and of external objects by _______ them, that is, by keeping apart incompatible impulses.
splitting
It is a psychic defense mechanism in which infants split off unacceptable parts of themselves, project them
into another object, and finally introject them back into themselves in a changed or distorted form.
projective identification
Happens when the person takes in aspects of the external world and then organizes those introjections into a psychologically meaningful framework.
internalizations
True or False. Unlike Freud, Klein believed that the ego, or one’s sense of self, reaches maturity at a much earlier stage.
True
Klein’s picture of the superego differs from Freud’s in at least 3 important respects.
- It emerges much earlier in life.
- It is not an outgrowth of the Oedipus complex.
- It is much more harsh and cruel.
Klein’s analysis of young children led her to believe that the early superego produces not guilt but ______.
terror
According to Mahler, the first major developmental
stage is ________.
normal autism
As infants gradually realize that they cannot satisfy their own needs, they begin to recognize their primary caregiver and to seek a symbiotic relationship with
her, a condition that leads to __________.
normal symbiosis
The third major developmental stage, ___________, children become psychologically separated from their mothers, achieve a sense of individuation, and begin to develop feelings of personal identity.
separation-individuation
It is marked by a bodily breaking away from the mother-infant symbiotic orbit.
differentiation
Children easily distinguish their body from their mother’s, establish a specific bond with their mother, and begin to develop an autonomous ego.
practicing
