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Abi
Member
USA
4046 Posts |
 Posted - 05 Mar 2003 : 07:41:42 AM
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Hi, all.
Since there seems to be more people interested on the effects of Object Relations Theory on the board right now than in the past, I thought it might be helpful to post some basic information on the British origins of the theory itself and basic info on the theory itself. Just call me Watchette. (PS - mother = primary caregiver...not necessarily mother, per se.)
The following infomation comes from the book The Primer of Object Relations Therapy (formerly titled Scharff Notes) by Jill Savege Scharff, MD & David E. Scharff, MD.
British object relations theory is a theory of the human personality developed from study of the therapist-patient relationship as it reflects the mother-infant dyad. The theory holds that the infant's experience in relationship with the mother is the primary determinant of personality formation and that the infant's need for attachment to the mother is the motivating factor in the development of the infantile self. It is an amalgam of the work of British analysts Ronald Fairbairn, Donald Winnicott, Harry Guntrip, and Michael Balint, of the British Independent group, augmented by those of Melanie Klein and the Kleinian group. Although Independent and Kleinian theories are quite distinct from each other, and differ in the ways that each diverges from Sigmund Freud's theory of the mind, they are similar in focusing on the importance of the infant's experience of the mothering relationship. The Independent group followed Freud's use of the psychosexual stages of development, but disagreed that the inevitable progression of these stages was based on the primacy of the instincts. They proposed instead that the need to be in relationship to a caregiver was the fundamental driving force and that the characteristic kinds of relatedness seen at various ages were determined by shifting dependent needs, not by instinctual loading of the erogenous bases. The Kleinians stayed true to Freud's view of the instincts and elaborated upon the death instinct, but they revised his psychosexual timetable. They described their ideas of how the infant uses unconscious fantasy to effect the release of tension from the instincts and how the processing of fantasy creates psychic structure. Both Independent group and Kleinian theorists developed theories of personality formation and psychic structure different from Freud's, and different from each other. Nevertheless the theories can be integrated because of their commonality in focus on the first three years of life...and their emphasis on the experience of the mother-infant relationship as the component of psychic structure formation.
Object relations is an inclusive technical term that spans the intrapsychic and interpesonal dimensions. It refers to the system of built-in parts of the personality in relation to each other inside the self. These are expressed in the arena of current relationships by which the original intrapsychic constructions of object relations are further modified. Internal objects and other parts of the self are reciprocal with outer objects so that, in any relationship, the personalities are mutually influenced by each other. Our external relationships are in interaction with our internal psychic structures.
An internal object is a piece of psychic structure that formed from the person's experience with the important caretaking person in earlier life, captured in the personality as the trace of that earlier relationship. Not a memory, nor a representation, it is a part of the self's being.
The external object refers to the significant other with whom the person is in relationship. It might refer to the early significant other or the present significant other. It bears a relationship to the internal object in that the internal object is based on the experience with the original external object and is expressed in the present choice of an external object. The internal object is also modified by its relationship with the present external object.
During the early relationship to the mother, the baby has a limited capacity to understand what the mother is feeling or expressing or to separate this from what the baby feels. The baby's limited cognitive capacity distorts the view of the mother, so that already the internal object does not accurately reflect the external object. Later on, as the baby grows and develops, new issues at the forefront of development change what the baby thinks is happening with the external object. So it creates a contemporary version of the internal object to internalize. For instance, when a child is at a point where autonomy and control are at the leading edge of development, the child's capacity to hold on to and let go of the external object reshapes the internal object's organization. In summary, previous experience with the external object at all stages of development is cumulatively internalized. When child, adolescent, and adult meet new people, they will expect the new relationships to be like those they have known. Even if they are not really like that, the new figures may be experienced as though they were, in order to reaffirm that new experience is familiar and will not create a demand for change in the internal object relationships. Pressure from healthy, new external objects to maintain their own integrity reverses this trend. Then, new relationships can afford both patrners the opportunity for further mofification of their internal object worlds.
Objects are only part of the personality. The child is born with its own potential personality. At birth, there is a self ready and pre-wired to relate to the external objects that the infant will find in the environment. In relation to these external objects, the self then grows and develops and builds upon its experience with the objects to create psychic structure. |
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Duncan
Member
USA
5071 Posts |
Posted - 05 Mar 2003 : 11:07:28 PM
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Abi, this is most helpful to me, and correlates very closely with the sort of internal process I follow. .excepting that the mother is the only impetus for instinctual development. Of course, developing into the rawness of the psyche covers a little larger terrain than 'psychic' development, so I am a little more organic, but it is the same sort of garden.
I will reply at length, and concretely, tomorrow.
Thank you for your extensive post.  |
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john
Member
USA
3817 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2003 : 09:31:32 AM
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hi watchette,
thanks for the info. i never really delved too far into this so this is great. if you were truely watchette you'll follow up with more going by the last paragraph am i to understand that they beleive that the child is born pre wired to either assert, withdraw or comply? what part is inborn and what gets developed from the early years? if you are born with the pre wiring to move toward does the early years support or damage this tendency or are they saying that moving toward,away or against is formed by the early years and if so what are they saying is prewired?
john 5/4/social/sexual/intp |
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Abi
Member
USA
4046 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2003 : 10:36:16 AM
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John -"if you were truely watchette you'll follow up with more"
ROFL...I'm working on part two right now.
All questions will be answered <eerie music, spooky fog surround the gypsy woman>
I figured I'd post all the basic stuff first and then we could haggle the nature/nuture stuff  . There is a triadic part coming up, maybe in part three (how apropos!), that might prove quite interesting. |
Edited by - Abi on 06 Mar 2003 11:00:45 AM |
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Abi
Member
USA
4046 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2003 : 11:03:00 AM
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Part two from The Primer of Object Relations Theraphy by Jill Savage Scharff,MD & David E. Scharff,MD
The self refers to the total personality growing through the life cycle. At first it is a pristine, unformed self, gradually becoming enriched by experience with the objects. The baby is organized from the beginning to acquire experience in order to build a personality and a sense of self. The self comprises: (1) the old-fashioned concept of the ego as an executive mechanism that modulates self-control through its control of motility, sphincters, and affect states, and that mediates relations with the outside, (2) the internal objects, and (3) objects and parts of the ego bound together by the affects (feelings) appropriate to the child's experiences of these object relationships.
We've used the term self to refer to the combination of ego and internal objects in a unique, dynamic relation that comprises the character and gives a sense of personal identity that endures and remains relatively constant over time.
The self is the unique psychic organization that creates a person's identity. The external object is what the whole self relates to when it interacts with another person. The internal object is one of the substructures of the self. Also inside the self are various other internal objects and parts of the ego that correspond to them. The ego and its parts moderate operations and feelings that are identified with the self, organized in subcategories of the ego. These broad subcategories relate to corresponding internal objects. These categories of the self and their relavant objects are bound together by the emotion or affect that characterizes the object relationship. Different kinds of internal object relationships arise during different affect states.
Internal object relationship is a term for the relationship between part of the ego and its object bound together by the feelings that were experienced by the ego in relation to that object. The internal object relationship becomes an enduring, but potentially modifiable, part of the self that may remain in consciousness if it provokes intolerable anxiety.
We now have a view of the self as consisting of conscious and inconscious parts. Object relation therapists hold that the unconscious is part of the ego, in contrast to Freud, who described the unconscious as separate from the ego, located in a part of the personality that he called the "id" - a seething mass of impulses seeking discharge and governed by irrational thinking processes.
At the time of their writing, the theorists were thinking of the influence on the child of mothering by the actual mother, the woman who had borne the child or had undertaken to raise the child. Fairbairn and Winnicott noticed the reality of the holding and the handling of the child, but also noted the influence of the mother's personality on the mother-infant relationship, whereas Klein was more concerned with the infant's fantasies about the relationship. All of them underemphasized the father's contribution to the child's experience, except as the mother's partner.
Nowadays, with fathers a more active part in the raising of their children and mothers working outside the home, we use the term mother to refer to the person whi is centrally responsible for the daily care of the child. This person might be the actual mother (biological or adoptive), the father, an older sibling, the family housekeeper, or, more likely, a combination of them. We need more studies of the effect that sharing of the mothering function has on the infant's development to be more precise about its impact on personality, but for now we can say that the infant integrates experience with multiple external objects to arrive at composite internal objects. All of these significant people are in relationship to each other. The relationship between these external objects affects the integration of composite internal objects and their internal dynamic relation. |
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Duncan
Member
USA
5071 Posts |
Posted - 06 Mar 2003 : 11:56:42 PM
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| excellent, excellent, excellent, abi. |
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Abi
Member
USA
4046 Posts |
Posted - 09 Mar 2003 : 1:46:56 PM
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Here is the third, and last (at least for now) installment from The Primer of Object Relations Theraphy by Jill Savege Scharff,MD and David E. Scharff, MD.
I think these three installments give a good basic overview of the object relations theory. And, as promised, the third installment includes a TRIAD
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Fairbairn described three main categories of internal object relationship, one in the conscious part of the self and the other two repressed in the unconscious:
(1) the ideal object relationship (in the conscious part of the self)
(2) the exciting object relationship (in the unconscious part of the self)
(3) the rejecting object relationship (in the unconscious part of the self)
Sorting and ordering of the internal psychological organization occur through the mechanism of splitting paired with repression. Fairbairn thought that the infant found even the good mother to be rejecting at times; for instance, when she could not be there the instant that her infant wanted comfort or food. To cope with the intolerable feelings of anxiety and abandonment, the infant held on to her by taking the image of her as this rejecting object inside, a process called introjection. In Fairbairn's theory, introjection is the ego's first defense against unbearable pain and separation from the object. (In our view, however, infants internalize all aspects of the mothering relationship, because that is how they code experience from which they form psychological structure and become capable of separate funtioning.)
In Fairbairn's view, following introjection of the bad object, the infant now has a sense of dissatisfaction inside the rudimentary infant self. To retain undisturbed an ideal image of the mother in consciousness, the infant's ego deals with the pain of rejection by repressing the whole image of the unsatisfying object into unconsciousness. There the rejected object is further sorted into two categories, (1) the rejecting object and (2) the exciting object. However, an internal object cannot be split off and repressed by itself. The part of the ego that has to relate to that painful object has to be split off with the object, along with the affect that characterizes this painful relationship. In the case of the rejecting object, the relevant affects are anger, frustration and sadness. In the case of the exciting object relationship, the affects are ones of craving and painful longing.
The rejecting object relationship consists of the antilibidinal ego, the rejecting object, and the affects, rage, and sadness. Fairbairn originally called the part of the ego that was repressed with the rejecting object "the internal saboteur" because it threatened to return to consciousness and there spoil defensive idealization. Later Fairbairn changed the name of this part of the self to the anti-libidinal ego. The rejecting ego supports the central ego in further repressing the exciting object relationship. This sabotages the possibility of the central ego being invested with a good level of excitement about anticipating and seeking pleasant, vital relationships.
The other class of bad object relations - bad because painful, not morally bad - is the need-exciting object relationship. A good mother can excite need in her infant by being too attentive. She might anxiously hover near her infant or feed him too readily before he can feel his lust for food, comfort, and connection. Fairbairn's term for the object that excites need and desire is the libidinal object and for the part of the ego that relates to it, the libidinal ego. He chose these names to follow classical usage of the term libido to describe the sexual drives, which were thought by Freud to be the seat of all desire, but any correspondence is quite inexact. The affects that characterize the libidinal object relationship are the ones of unsatisfiable longing, anxious arousal, and desperation.
Fairbairn's original theory did not account for a part of the self more deeply repressed than the libidinal internal object system. Guntrip proposed that in schizoid states, a further subdivision of the already repressed libidinal ego is repressed and split off into a remote, deadened part of the self where it is harbored against the expected danger of empathetic failure and the desparately frightening experience of a void within the core of the self. Fairbairn accepted Guntrip's important addendum to his theory. Michael Balint discovered a similar phenomenon in his regressed patients. They described a feeling of something missing at the core of the self. He calles this the basic fault. These deficit states arise from a poor mother-infant relationship in which the infant did not feel cared for, loved, and lovable. Object relation theorists recognized that their discoveries had implications for technique. As Guntrip put it, therapy had to offer a challenge to the closed system of parts of the personality and present a context for rebirth and regrowth in the therapeutic relationship as an alternative to regression.
Late in his theory-building, Fairbairn described the object of the central self, discovered during his study of hysterical states. He called it the ideal object. In the hysterical state, it is an object shorn of excessive excitement or rejection. The hysterical person seeks in the lover a bland object so as not to be unbearably upset or excited. In the normal state, we think of the ideal object as an internal object that is satisfactory. We might call this the good-enough object, or simply, the good object. Nowadays, the terms ideal, good, and good-enough are used interchangeably. The idael object is the object of the central ego and is connected to it by positive feelings in the full range of human affects, and it remains in consciousness because it is satisfying. The ideal object relationship in the central, conscious part of the self is available for interaction with ideal objects in other personalities. Being in consciousness, it is free to grow and be modified because it is not harbored secretly inside the self, as the repressed exciting and rejecting object relationships are. Nevertheless, the good object tends to be absorbed or metabolized by our central selves. The ideal object relationship suffuses the entire personality rather than standing out as a discrete, recognizable piece of psychic structure.
Paradoxically, although it is in consciousness, the ideal object relationship is less observable than the repressed object, relationships that are expressed in the interpersonal field - and especially in the transference - in the form of unsatisfying relatinships that call attention to them.
The human personality is a system of consciousness and unconsciousness object relationships in dynamic relation. The central ego actively represses the rejecting and exciting constellations. The antilibidinal ego further represses the the rejecting object constellation, and the libidinal ego further represses the rejecting object constellation. A further split may occur in which an endangered part of the libidinal ego is further repressed and becomes deeply withdrawn. Now we can summarize the endopsychic situation as follows:
(1) in consciousness, the ideal object relationship, consisting of the central ego, the idael object, and feelings of satisfaction and goodness;
(2) in unconsciousness, (a) the rejecting object relationship, consisting of the antilibidinal ego, the rejecting object, and fellings of frustration and rage; and (b) the exciting object relationship, consisting of the libidinal ego, the exciting object, and feelings of frustration of painful longing.
The self is the original psychic structure the person is born with. It then matures and develops by building into it traces of important and formative relationships. As it does this, the self becomes the encompassing structure that includes not only its original potential for structure but also a sense of identity based on all the internal object relations within it. The ideal, exciting and rejecting objects, the central, libidinal, and antilibidinal parts of the ego in relationship to these objects, respectively, as well as the whole collection of corresponding affects are all in an internal dynamic relationship to each other. This dynamic relation between parts of the self follows the universal system of the endopsychic situation that Fairbairn described, but the precise balance of forces is unique to each person.
Fairbairn described how one part of the internal structure represses another part directly and indirectly. The central ego represses both the exciting and rejecting object constellations directly. Then the rejecting object constellation (that is, the internal saboteur and the rejecting object together) lies on top of the libidinal object like a blanket keeping out of awareness of the central ego. Fairbairn said that repression happens in this direction rather than the reverse, because it is much more painful to be aware of an unrequited longing than to have an angry relationship. On the contrary, we find that it is equally common for the libidinal or excited object relationship to repress rejecting object relations. We see this in a person who has a seductive attitude toward others as a defensive way of repressing aggression or feelings of rejection. We see it in married partners who seduce each other to be sexually intimate in order to avoid angry feelings that cannot be expressed.
When Fairbairn described the secondary repression of the libidinal by the antilibidinal constellations inside the self, he opened the door for us to understand that internal object relationships inside the self are in dynamic relationship to each other, so that at one point one constellation will be the controlling or ascendant organization, and at another point a differnet one will come to the fore.
Some people have said that the self is the more modern term for the old-fashioned term ego. In our lexicon, self is an overall term for that continuing sense of uniqueness that a person carries. We think that the term self includes ego (that is to say, the executive relating function and both its conscious and unconscious aspects), the objects that the parts of the ego relate to, and all feelings that arise between the parts of the ego and parts of the object.
The ego is an executive subset of the self. Only the self can relate as a whole person.
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john
Member
USA
3817 Posts |
Posted - 09 Mar 2003 : 2:31:51 PM
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thanks abi
any closing thoughts from you? are you going to tie it into the enneagram for us?
john 5/4/social/sexual/intp |
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Abi
Member
USA
4046 Posts |
Posted - 09 Mar 2003 : 4:09:08 PM
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Hi, John.
I do plan to post some thoughts and to answer the questions from your previous post. I just needed a break from typing (my scanner is broken) and it's time for my nap. |
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Duncan
Member
USA
5071 Posts |
Posted - 12 Mar 2003 : 4:30:22 PM
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| *bump* this is a great post, abi. i'm reminding myself to reply here. |
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Abi
Member
USA
4046 Posts |
Posted - 12 Mar 2003 : 9:54:08 PM
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Me, too. I wore myself out temporarily on the subject of ORT. I'm taking a break and doing some light reading "Why Stock Markets Crash- Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems" by Didier Sornette. I need a life. |
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Duncan
Member
USA
5071 Posts |
Posted - 14 Mar 2003 : 1:27:02 PM
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Light reading, abi? Sheesh. Enjoy!
But I will get back to you. Self-formation work is important to me. Humility is a better game. I like it. The younger I am, the better off everyone is. Belieeeeeve me.
Stay in the money, eh? |
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Abi
Member
USA
4046 Posts |
Posted - 14 Mar 2003 : 9:47:36 PM
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It's worse than that. I'm reading it for the math. 
But chapter six ties in fractals. |
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Duncan
Member
USA
5071 Posts |
Posted - 18 Mar 2003 : 01:55:00 AM
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Abi, you got me. I may join in. I hate to say it, but that's the same reason I work with people's psyches and quantum bio-physics - for the math.
people would think I'm sick, so I never tell them. I just say, "yeah, i'm a bodyworker/ coach/ consultant, etc. . "
Good Grief. We DO have something in common.
Enjoy! |
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Abi
Member
USA
4046 Posts |
Posted - 18 Mar 2003 : 06:08:25 AM
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"that's the same reason I work with people's psyches and quantum bio-physics - for the math."
Oooo...do tell! What does this mean? Please keep it simple - I love math, but I don't always understand it.
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Duncan
Member
USA
5071 Posts |
Posted - 18 Mar 2003 : 12:41:57 PM
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Abi, I'll put my mind to it. It is damned near to impossible, which is why I never say anything. Stay tuned. It's all physics, interface of dark and light energies, light waves and pigments, etc; and math, integrals/ derivatives, trig (sine/ cos/ tan/ cotan), etc. It's kinda voluminous.
Multiple level work is always trackable by the biology inside those dynamics, BUT . .
it all depends on [blocked due to guideline #4 violation] like awareness, intention and power. it's extremely concrete and not . .and, unfortunately, the double blind experiments you need to conduct only happpen in the "LIFE" laboratory.
and one of your subjects is this transient, variable thing call ed "SOUL". so there are a 'variety of outcomes', but the rules always apply . .
oops, i see you said, "keep it simple" . .ok, I'll put my mind to that, too.  I'll have to use people on the board as examples, though, so it could get messy . .but fun.  That's a medium we can both relate to. |
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Ocean
Member
4217 Posts |
Posted - 18 Mar 2003 : 12:47:30 PM
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feel free... |
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Duncan
Member
USA
5071 Posts |
Posted - 18 Mar 2003 : 12:54:44 PM
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i do. *Now*
it's a little more transmissible with my presence, tho. it ain't in the words. i'll run the seminars, too.
i'm careful, ocean . .ya talk like that, and people start to fear you pretty fast. .or hate you, tho. neither of which i need right now. and what i have ain't for that purpose, either. |
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Ocean
Member
4217 Posts |
Posted - 18 Mar 2003 : 2:14:50 PM
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quote:
I'll have to use people on the board as examples, though, so it could get messy . .but fun.
I meant feel free as in using me as an example if you want. |
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Duncan
Member
USA
5071 Posts |
Posted - 18 Mar 2003 : 2:46:50 PM
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once you start to engage me, i can begin to apply the math principles. it's interactive, not theory.
and interesting, here we are on Abi's or thread, talking about the formation of the self. |
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Ocean
Member
4217 Posts |
Posted - 18 Mar 2003 : 3:03:36 PM
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| Ah, I see where the math comes in. For 8K to 11K, I'll get your feet to finally take root in the earth, while keeping a nice little place in the stars. |
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Ocean
Member
4217 Posts |
Posted - 18 Mar 2003 : 4:31:26 PM
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Duncan,
ok, that may have been a bit mean of me, but...
quote:
Stay tuned. It's all physics, interface of dark and light energies, light waves and pigments, etc; and math, integrals/ derivatives, trig (sine/ cos/ tan/ cotan), etc. It's kinda voluminous.
I work with people's psyches and quantum bio-physics - for the math.
Once you choose a direction, then all the math comes into play. I keep your body together.
I understand that its experience, not words, but still, ...huh? What does trigonometry have to do with personality? quantum bio-physics???
...Ocean
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Duncan
Member
USA
5071 Posts |
Posted - 18 Mar 2003 : 4:42:56 PM
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[blocked due to guideline #4 violation] it. I'll delete it. Like I said. Only my presence does it. Ask around.
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Duncan
Member
USA
5071 Posts |
Posted - 18 Mar 2003 : 4:49:39 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Ocean
Ah, I see where the math comes in. For 8K to 11K, I'll get your feet to finally take root in the earth, while keeping a nice little place in the stars.
Uh, NO. I couldn't give a [blocked due to guideline #4 violation] about money.
You're not hearing me. I said, do you want to change your entire life completely? |
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Duncan
Member
USA
5071 Posts |
Posted - 18 Mar 2003 : 4:54:04 PM
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quote:
Stay tuned. It's all physics, interface of dark and light energies, light waves and pigments, etc; and math, integrals/ derivatives, trig (sine/ cos/ tan/ cotan), etc. It's kinda voluminous.
I work with people's psyches and quantum bio-physics - for the math.
Once you choose a direction, then all the math comes into play. I keep your body together.
I understand that its experience, not words, but still, ...huh? What does trigonometry have to do with personality? quantum bio-physics???
First off, if I were in your presence, it would all be done almost unnoticeably, and I would never speak that way to you.
Under every one of those words, think like you just put in six months of serious transformational work, and did some major shift, and then I begin applying those principles, because it keeps your body together. Otherwise, it wouldn't be.
Now, refer back to the last post I did there. If you speak more to me about the totality of your life, I'll give you some plausible results, and then I'll tell you how applying one of those principles could ostensibly change that whole section in reality. |
Edited by - Duncan on 18 Mar 2003 7:51:00 PM |
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Duncan
Member
USA
5071 Posts |
Posted - 18 Mar 2003 : 7:51:56 PM
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ocean, where did you go?
sorry, kali, it's a subjective experience. you canna' get out alive with an objective mind intact. |
Edited by - Duncan on 18 Mar 2003 7:52:40 PM |
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Object Relations basics...
