CHAPTER 5: Klein: Object Relations Theory

Question 1

believed that infants begin life with an inherited predisposition to reduce the anxiety that they experience as a consequence of the clash between the life instinct and the death instinct.

Answer 1

Psychic Life of the Infant

Question 2

very young infants possess an active, unconscious fantasy life. Their most basic fantasies are images of the “good” breast and the “bad” breast.

Answer 2

Fantasies

Question 3

(parents’ face, hands,
breast, penis, etc.), which she saw as having a life of their own within the
child’s fantasy world.

Answer 3

objects

Question 4

ways of dealing with both internal and external objects.

Answer 4

Positions

Question 5

The struggles that infants experience with the good breast and the bad breast

Answer 5

Paranoid-Schizoid Position

Question 6

a tendency to see the world as having both destructive and omnipotent qualities.

Answer 6

Paranoid-Schizoid Position

Question 7

Klein meant the anxiety that infants experience around 6 months of age over losing their mother and yet, at the same time, wanting to destroy her.

Answer 7

Depressive Position

Question 8

infants fantasize that they have made up for their previous transgressions against their mother and also realize that their mother will not abandon them.

Answer 8

Depressive Position

Question 9

According to Klein, children adopt various psychic defense mechanisms to protect their ego against anxiety aroused by their own destructive fantasies.

Answer 9

Psychic Defense Mechanisms

Question 10

the fantasy of taking into one’s own body the images that one has of an external object, especially the mother’s breast. Infants usually introject good objects as a protection against anxiety, but they also introject bad objects in order to gain control of them.

Answer 10

introjection

Question 11

The fantasy that one’s own feelings and impulses reside within another person
is called projection. Children project both good and bad images, especially onto
their parents.

Answer 11

Projection

Question 12

Infants tolerate good and bad aspects of themselves and of external objects

-mentally keeping apart, incompatible images.

Answer 12

Splitting

Question 13

the psychic defense mechanism whereby infants split off unacceptable parts of themselves, project them onto another object, and finally introject them in an altered form.

Answer 13

Projective Identification

Question 14

Margaret Mahler’s View

Answer 14

normal autism
normal symbiosis
separation-individuation

Question 15

from about 4 months until about 3 years, a time when children are becoming psychologically separated from their mothers and achieving individuation, or a sense of personal identity.

Answer 15

separation-individuation

Question 16

covers the first 3 to 4 weeks of life, a time when infants satisfy their needs within the all-powerful protective orbit of their mother’s care.

Answer 16

normal autism

Question 17

when infants behave as if they and their mother were an omnipotent, symbiotic unit.

Answer 17

normal symbiosis

Question 18

___________emphasized the development of the self. In caring for their physical and psychological needs, adults treat infants as if they had a sense of self.

Answer 18

Heinz Kohut’

Question 19

______believes that the key to understanding personality is the mother-child relationship

Answer 19

Otto Kernberg

Question 20

three stages of separation anxiety

Answer 20

(1) protest, (2) apathy and despair, and (3) emotional detachment

Question 21

John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory

Answer 21

three stages of separation anxiety