Object Relations Theory: Melanie Klein Flashcards
In contrast to Freud, who emphasized the first 4 to 6 years of life, Klein stressed the importance of the first _____ months after birth.
4 to 6
_____ believed that children’s sense of identity rests on a three-step relationship with their mother.
Margaret Mahler
_____ theorized that children develop a sense of self during early infancy when parents and others treat them as if they had an individualized sense of identity.
Heinz Kohut
_____ investigated infants’ attachment to their mother as well as the negative consequences of being separated from their mother
John Bowlby
_____ and her colleagues developed a technique for measuring the type of attachment style an infant develops toward its caregiver.
Mary Ainsworth
One of Klein’s basic assumptions is that the infant, even at birth, possesses an active phantasy life. These phantasies are psychic representations of ___ instincts.
unconscious id
Splitting is a coping strategy where a person categorizes experiences, objects, or people into extreme and polarized categories, such as all-good or all-bad. This defense mechanism is associated with both paranoid feelings of persecution and a division of internal and external objects into positive (good) and negative (bad) aspects.
To manage the conflicting feelings towards the same object, the ego employs splitting. This involves the ego separating itself and assigning aspects of life and death instincts while projecting other parts of these instincts onto external objects, particularly the breast. This process allows the individual to maintain a sense of cohesion while dealing with complex emotions and experiences.
Paranoid-Schizoid Position (3rd or 4th month)
Beginning at about the 5th or 6th month, an infant begins to view external objects as whole and to see that good and bad can exist in the same person
Depressive Position
The depressive position is _____ when children fantasize that they have made reparation for their previous transgressions and when they recognize that their mother will not go away permanently but will return after each departure.
resolved
Her analysis of young children led her to believe that the early superego produces not guilt but _____
terror
By _, Margaret Mahler meant that the child becomes an individual separate from his or her primary caregiver, an accomplishment that leads ultimately to a sense of identity.
psychological birth
Normal Autism - unhatched bird egg
Normal Symbiosis - shell is now beginning to crack
Separation-Individuation
Mahler’s three major developmental stages:
During this time, children must develop a constant inner representation of their mother so that they can tolerate being physically separate from her
Margaret Mahler’s Libidinal Object Constancy substage on separation-individuation stage of development.
Kohut believed that _____, not innate instinctual drives, are at the core of human personality.
human relatedness
Kohut defined the _____ as “the center of the individual’s psychological universe”.
self
Kohut believed that infants are naturally ______.
narcissistic
Both narcissistic self-images are necessary for healthy personality development.
Heinz Kohut
John Bowlby’s _____ Theory
Attachment
Protest Stage - caregiver is first out of sight, infants will cry
Despair - as separation continues, infants become quiet, sad, passive, listless, and apathetic.
Detachment - The last stage—the only one unique to humans—is detachment. During this stage, infants become emotionally detached from other people, including their caregiver.
Bowlby observed three stages of this separation anxiety:
Mary Ainsworth and the _____ Situation
Strange
Secure attachment - when their mother returns, infants are happy and enthusiastic and initiate contact
Anxious-resistant attachment style, infants are ambivalent. Pabebe
Anxious-avoidant - infants stay calm when their mother leaves; they accept the stranger, and when their mother returns, they ignore and avoid her.
Mary Ainsworth and her associates found three attachment style ratings:
Klein substituted _____ for Freudian dream analysis and free association, believing that young children express their conscious and unconscious wishes through _____.
Play Therapy
Object relations has been used to explain the formation of _____ disorders.
eating
Smolak and Levine found that bulimia was associated with _____ from parents.
overseparation
Anorexia was associated with high levels of _____ over separation from parents.
guilt and conflict
