Concept
Object relations theory
A family of psychoanalytic theories that take a person's relations with others, and with the inner images of others laid down in early life, rather than the discharge of drives, as the basic stuff of mental life and development. Its main British forms grew from the work of Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott and Balint between the 1930s and the 1950s, and Fairbairn gave it its most thoroughgoing form by holding that libido seeks objects from the start.
- Narrower concepts
- Key works
- 4
developed by
- Otto F. Kernberg 1976 Kernberg built an object-relations theory within ego psychology, in which units of self-image, object-image and the affect linking them are the building blocks of psychic structure, drawing together Kleinian, British Middle Group and ego-psychological models.
- Ronald Fairbairn Fairbairn recast psychoanalysis as a theory of object relations throughout, holding that libido seeks objects rather than pleasure; the US edition of his collected papers bore the title An Object-Relations Theory of the Personality.
gave rise to
- Attachment theory Attachment theory grew from the British object-relations tradition's focus on early relationships and loss, though Bowlby replaced its reliance on phantasy and drive with ethological and observational evidence.
- Relational psychoanalysis The second root of the relational school is British object relations theory, above all Fairbairn and Winnicott. From it the school took its concern with internal objects and with relations as the stuff of mind.