Chapter 5 - Melanie Klein Flashcards
Overview of Object Relations Theory
- The Objections Relations Theory is built on careful observation of young children.
- Klein stressed the importance of the first 4-6 months after birth.
- Infant’s drives are (breast, penis, and vagina)
- The child’s relation to the breast is fundamental and serves as a prototype for later relations to whole objects, such as mother and father.
- Klein’s ideas tend to shift the focus of psychoanalytic theory from organically (biological) based stages of development to the role of early fantasy in the formation of interpersonal relationships.
Other Theories that put importance in the early Child-Mother experience:
Heinz Kohut (Self Psychology)- children develop a sense of self during early infancy when parents and others treat them as if they had an individualized sense of identity.
John Bowlby (Attachment Theory) - infants attachment to their mother as well as the negative consequences of being separated from their mother.
Mary Ainsworth (Categorization of Attachment styles) - developed a technique for measuring the type of attachment style an infant develops towards its caregiver.
According to Heinz Kohut…
Children develop a sense of self during early infancy when parents and others treat them as if they had an individualized sense of identity.
John Bowlby
Infants attachment to their mother as well as the negative consequences of being separated from their mother.
Mary Ainsworth
Developed a technique for measuring the type of attachment style an infant develops towards its caregiver.
Melanie (Reizes) Klein: Birth and Death
Born: March 20, 1882, Vienna, Austria
Death: September 22, 1960, in London, United Kingdom
Ancestral Family of Klein
Father: Dr. Moriz Reizes
Mother: Libussa Deutsch
Distant with Father
Loved but suffocated by her Mother
Sidonie
- A sister 4 years older than Klein that she had a special fondness
- Taught Melanie Arithmetic and reading
- Died when Melanie was 4
- Melanie never moved on from her sister’s death
Emmanuel
- Brother, only got attached to him after Sidonie
- He was 5 years older than Melanie
- Idolized brother and used him as a standard for men
- He died when Melanie was 18
Personal Marriage and Family Life
- Married Arthur Klein (a close friend of her dead brother when she was 21)
- Regretted getting married at 21 because it prevented her from becoming a physician
- had three children with Arthur
- They moved to Budapest, Hungary, where her husband was transferred
- She met Sandor Ferenczi a member of Freud’s inner circle who introduced her psychoanalysis and treated Melanie when she became depressed when her mother died in 1914
Interest in Psychoanalysis
1914 - Read Freud’s “On Dreams” (she liked it)
1914 - Her youngest child, Erich was born
Used Freudian Principles and Psychoanalysis on Erich
1919 - Melanie separated but had not yet divorced her husband.
After divorce: She contributed to psychonanalytic literature using her son.
Karl Abraham, a member of the Freudian circle, started to create a type of analysis with Klein…only to die 14 months later.
Before Klein, theories of child development were based on adults.
Discovery - both positive and negative feelings towards their mother and that the superego developed much earlier than Freud stated
1926 - invited to go to London by Ernest Jones to psychoanalyze his children and to conduct a series of lectures on child analysis.
Later years
● Marked with division and controversy
● Anna and Sigmund Freud never accepted her techniques and emphasis on the importance of very early childhood experiences
● She and her daughter Melitta never got along and they conflicted a lot
● His older son Hans died from a fall. Melitta said it was suicide and blamed her motherIn 1946, the British Society accepted three training procedures developed a traditional method developed by Klein, A more advanced version by Anna Freud, and a more eclectic approach.
What is object relations theory?
Focuses on the importance of relationships rather than drives.
What are the three differences of object relations to the theory of Freud?
- Relationships over biology
- Maternalistic, focuses more on relationship of child and mother. Freud focuses more on Power of the Father
3.Human interactions is the primary motivator for humans unlike Freud who state sex.
Margaret S. Mahler
- Concerned with the infant’s struggle to achieve autonomy and a sense of self
● Mahler was primarily concerned with the psychological birth of the individual that takes place during the first 3 years of life.
Heinz Kohut
Concerned with the formation of the self
● Same with object relations theorists, he focused on the early mother-child relationship as the key to understanding later development.
● According to Kohut, infants require adult caregivers not only to gratify physical 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.
John Bowlby
Concerned with the stages of anxiety
Bowlby’s attachment theory also departed from psychoanalytic thinking by taking childhood as its starting point and then extrapolating forward to adulthood (Bowlby, 1969/1982, 1988).
● Bowlby firmly believed that the attachments formed during childhood have an important impact on adulthood.
● The origins of attachment theory came from Bowlby’s observations that both human and primate infants go through a clear sequence of reactions when separated from their primary caregivers.
