Content deleted Content added
No edit summary |
No edit summary |
||
Line 25:
==History==
The initial line of thought emerged in 1917 with [[Sándor Ferenczi]] and, early in the 1930s, [[Harry Stack Sullivan]], coiner of the term "interpersonal".<ref>Ogden, T. (2005). ''This Art of Psychoanalysis: Dreaming undreamt dreams and interrupted cries''. NY: Routledge. (p. 27).</ref> British psychologists [[Melanie Klein]], [[Donald Winnicott]], [[Harry Guntrip]], Scott Stuart, and others extended object relations theory during the 1940s and 1950s; in 1952, [[Ronald Fairbairn]]
The term has been used in many different contexts, which led to different connotations and denotations.<ref name=":0" /> While Fairbairn popularized the term "object relations", Melanie Klein's work tends to be most commonly identified with the terms "object relations theory" and "British object relations", at least in contemporary North America, though the influence of the [[British Independent Group (psychoanalysis)|British Independent Group]]—which argued that the primary motivation of the child is object seeking rather than drive gratification<ref>Glen O. Gabbard, ''Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy'' (Washington, DC 2010) p. 12</ref>—is becoming increasingly recognized. Klein felt that the psychodynamic battleground that Freud proposed occurs very early in life, during infancy. Furthermore, its origins are different from those that Freud proposed. The interactions between infant and mother are so deep and intense that they form the focus of the infant's structure of drives. Some of these interactions provoke anger and frustration; others provoke strong emotions of dependence as the child begins to recognize the mother is more than a breast from which to feed. These reactions threaten to overwhelm the individuality of the infant. The way in which the infant resolves the conflict, Klein believed, is reflected in the adult's personality.<ref>Gomez, 1997 p. 12</ref>
| |||