ELVEN ROSE P.

CANANUA
BS PSYCHOLOGY 2D

1. According to Klein, when is the most critical time for personality

development?
Ans. Object relations theories assume that the mother-child relationship
during the first 4 or 5 months is the most critical time for personality
development. She insisted that the infant’s drives are directed to an
object – a breast, a penis, a vagina, and so on. The child’s relationship to
the breast is fundamental and serves as a prototype for later relations to
whole objects, such as mother and father.
2. Discuss internal psychic representations.
Ans. Klein believe that an important part of any relationship is the internal
psychic representations of early significant objects, such as the mother’s
breast or the father’s penis that have been introjected, or taken into the
infant’s psychic structure and then projected onto one’s partner. These
internal pictures are not accurate representations of the other person but
are remnants of each person’s earlier experiences.
3. Compare and Contrast the 2 Basic Positions of infants.
Ans. Klein intended these positions to represent normal social growth and
development. The two basic positions are the Paranoid-Schizoid Position
which is 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 bad, they are likely to say “He’s dangerous”
instead of saying “I am aware that he is dangerous to me.” While the
Depressive Position is the feeling of anxiety over losing a loved object
coupled with a sense of guilt for wanting to destroy that object. Children
in the depressive position recognize that the loved object and the hated
object are now one and the same.
4. Compare and contrast Klein’s idea of superego and Freud’s.
Ans. Klein would describe a 5-year-old child’s superego in much the same
way Freud did. By the 5th or 6th year, the superego arouses little anxiety
but a great measure of guilt. Klein’s picture of the superego differs from
Freud had speculated and that it grows along with the Oedipal process
rather than being a product of it.
Klein picture of the superego differs from Freud’s in at least three
important respects. First, it emerges much earlier in life. Second, it is
not an outgrowth of the Oedipus complex and third, it is much more
harsh and cruel.
Freud conceptualized the superego as consisting of two subsystems. An
ego ideal that produces inferiority feelings and a conscience that results
in guilt feelings.

5. According to Klein, what does “reparation” mean?

Ans. Reparation for Klein refers to the psychological need to make things
good, that is to say, to mend and repair relationships with others.
6. Enumerate and discuss briefly the different Psychic Defense
Mechanisms.
Ans.
Introjection Klein simply means that infants fantasize taking into
their body those perceptions and experiences that they have had
with the external object, originally the mother’s breast. Introjection
begins with an infant’s first feeding, when there is an attempt to
incorporate the mother’s breast into the infant’s body. Infants also
fantasize that their mother is constantly present that is, they feel
that their mother is always inside their body.
Projection is the fantasy that one’s own feelings and impulses
actually reside in another person and not within one’s body.
Children project both bad and good images onto external objects,
especially their parents.
Splitting infants can only manage the good and bad aspects of
themselves and of external objects by splitting them, by keeping
apart incompatible impulses. In order to separate bad and good
objects, the ego must itself be split. It enables people to see both
positive and negative aspects of themselves, to evaluate their
behavior as good or bad, and to differentiate between likable and
unlikable acquaintance.
Projective identification 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 them.
7. Cite the important concepts of the later views on Object Relations.
7.1. Margaret Mahler
To achieve psychological birth and individuation, a child proceeds through
a series of three major developmental stages an four sub-stages.
The first major stage is normal autism, which spans the period
from birth until about age 3 or 4 weeks. She believed that this stage
is a period of absolute primary narcissism in which an infant is
unaware of any other person. Thus, she referred to normal autism
as an “objectless” stage, a time when an infant naturally searches
for the mother’s breast.
Normal symbiosis, the second developmental stage in Mahler’s
theory. Normal symbiosis begins around the 4th and 5th week of age
but reaches its zenith during 4th or 5th month. During this time, the
infant behaves and functions as though he and his mother were an
omnipotent system a dual unity within one common boundary. By
this age the infant can recognize the mother’s face and can
perceive her pleasure or distress.
The third major developmental stage, separation-individuation,
spans the period from about 4th or 5th month of age until about the
30th to 36th month. During this time, children become
psychologically separated from their mothers, achieve a sense of
individuation, and begin to develop feelings of personal identity.
Thus, young children in the separation-individuation stage
experience the external world as being more dangerous than it was
during the first two stages.
Mahler divided the separation-individuation stage into four overlapping
sub stages:
First is differentiation, which lasts from about the 5th month until
the 7th to 10th month of age and is marked by a bodily breaking
away from the infant symbiotic orbit. At this age, Mahler
observed, infants smile in response to their own mother,
indicating a bond with a specific other person. Psychologically
healthy infants who expand their world beyond will be curious
about strangers and will inspect them, unhealthy infants will fear
strangers and recoil from them.
Practicing a period from about the 7th to 10th month age to about
the 15th or 16th month. During this sub phase, children easily
distinguish their body from their mother’s establish a specific
bond with their mother, and begin to develop an autonomous
ego.
 Rapprochement children experiences from about 16 to 25
months of age, they desire to bring their mother and themselves
back together, both physically and psychologically. Mahler
noticed that children of this stage want to share with their
mother every new acquisition of skill and every new experience.
Final sub phase is libidinal object constancy, which approximates
the 3rd year of life. During this time, children must develop a
constant inner representation of their mother so that they can
tolerate being physically separate from her.
7.2. Heinz Kohut
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 self-
objects, treat infants as if they had a sense of self. Kohut defined
the self as “the center of the individual’s psychological universe”
the self is also the child’s focus of interpersonal relations, shaping
how to be or she will relate to parents and other selfobjects.
7.3. John Bowlby
With his knowledge ethology and evolutionary theory, he realized
that object relations theory could be integrated with an evolutionary
perspective. Bowlby’s attachment theory also departed
psychoanalytic thinking by taking childhood as it’s starting point
and then extrapolating forward to adulthood. Bowlby firmly believed
that the attachments formed during childhood have an important
impact on adulthood. Because childhood attachments are crucial to
later development, Bowlby argued that investigators should study
childhood directly and not rely on distorted retrospective accounts
from adults.
Bowlby observed three stages of his separation anxiety, protest
stage is when caregiver is first out of sight, infants will cry, resist
soothing by other people, and search for their caregiver. The second
stage is called despair, as separation continues, infants become
quiet, sad, passive, listless, and pathetic. The last stage is
detachment, the only one unique to humans.
7.4. Mary Ainsworth
Ainsworth and her associates develop a technique for measuring
the type of attachment style that exists between caregiver and
infant, known as the Strange Situation. Ainsworth and her
associates found three attachment style ratings:
Secure attachment – when their mother returns, infants are
happy and enthusiastic and initiate contact.
Anxious-resistant attachment style – infants are ambivalent.
When their mother leaves the room, they become unusually
upset, and when their mother returns they seek contact with
her but reject attempts at being soothed.
Anxious-avoidant – when this style, infants calm when their
mother leaves, they accept the stranger, and when their
mother returns they ignore and avoid her.