Internal object

In Melanie Klein's theory, a figure felt to exist inside the self. It is built up by introjection from the infant's earliest experience of the people it depends on, above all the mother and her breast. An internal object is not a faithful copy of a real person. It is coloured by the infant's own love and hate, which are projected onto the outer figure and then taken back in. Internal objects are felt as concrete presences: good ones that support and protect, bad ones that persecute, or damaged ones that reproach. The ego and superego form around them. Whether a secure good object has been established within shapes anxiety, mood and later relationships. Klein wrote of internal objects from the mid-1930s. The idea became central to the Kleinian school, and Fairbairn took it up in his own altered form.