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Object relations theory

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Object relations theory is a school of thought in psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalysis centered around theories of stages of ego development. Its concerns include the relation of the psyche to others in childhood and the exploration of relationships between external people, as well as internal images and the relations found in them. Adherents to this school of thought maintain that the infant's relationship with the mother primarily determines the formation of their personality in adult life. Attachment is the bedrock of the development of the self, i.e. the psychic organization that creates one's sense of identity.

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158-470: While its groundwork derives from theories of development of the ego in Freudian psychodynamics , object relations theory does not place emphasis on the role of biological drives in the formation of personality in adulthood. This school of thought instead suggests that a person's pattern of relations to others as an adult is shaped by experiences of caregivers during infancy. Caregivers and other figures in

316-461: A "neurasthenia" which he linked to the death of his father in 1896 and which prompted a "self-analysis" of his own dreams and memories of childhood. His explorations of his feelings of hostility to his father and rivalrous jealousy over his mother's affections led him to fundamentally revise his theory of the origin of the neuroses. Based on his early clinical work, Freud postulated that unconscious memories of sexual molestation in early childhood were

474-645: A brother were born: Rosa (b. 1860), Marie (b. 1861), Adolfine (b. 1862), Paula (b. 1864), Alexander (b. 1866). In 1865, the nine-year-old Freud entered the Leopoldstädter Kommunal-Realgymnasium , a prominent high school. He proved to be an outstanding pupil and graduated from the Matura in 1873 with honors. He loved literature and was proficient in German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, Hebrew , Latin and Greek . Freud entered

632-428: A capacity for sympathy, responsibility to and concern for others, and an ability to identify with the subjective experience of people one cares about. With the withdrawal of the destructive projections, repression of the aggressive impulses takes place. The child allows caretakers a more separate existence, which facilitates increasing differentiation of inner and outer reality. Omnipotence is lessened, which corresponds to

790-439: A capacity to self-soothe. Ogden identifies four functions that projective identification may serve. As in the traditional Kleinian model, it serves as a defense. Projective identification serves as a mode of communication. It is a form of object relations, and "a pathway for psychological change." As a form of object relationship, projective identification is a way of relating with others who are not seen as entirely separate from

948-513: A career in neurology . Freud read William Shakespeare in English; his understanding of human psychology may have been partially derived from Shakespeare's plays. Freud's Jewish origins and his allegiance to his secular Jewish identity were of significant influence in the formation of his intellectual and moral outlook, especially concerning his intellectual non-conformism, as he pointed out in his Autobiographical Study . They would also have

1106-499: A commission to translate four essays from John Stuart Mill 's collected works. He graduated with an MD in March 1881. In 1882 Freud began his medical career at Vienna General Hospital . His research work in cerebral anatomy led to the publication in 1884 of an influential paper on the palliative effects of cocaine, and his work on aphasia would form the basis of his first book On Aphasia: A Critical Study , published in 1891. Over

1264-432: A critical review of existing theory, Freud gives detailed interpretations of his own and his patients' dreams in terms of wish-fulfillments made subject to the repression and censorship of the "dream-work". He then sets out the theoretical model of mental structure (the unconscious, pre-conscious and conscious) on which this account is based. An abridged version, On Dreams , was published in 1901. In works that would win him

1422-401: A decrease in guilt and the fear of loss. When all goes well, the developing child is able to comprehend that external others are autonomous people with their own needs and subjectivity. Previously, extended absences of the object (the good breast, the mother) was experienced as persecutory, and, according to the theory of unconscious phantasy , the persecuted infant phantisizes destruction of

1580-400: A fear of destroying others. In fact or phantasy, one now realizes the capacity to harm or drive away a person who one ambivalently loves. The defenses characteristic of the depressive position include the manic defenses, repression and reparation. The manic defenses are the same defenses evidenced in the paranoid-schizoid position, but now mobilized to protect the mind from depressive anxiety. As

1738-426: A focal point in the ego and makes for cohesiveness of the ego. ... I suggest for these processes the term 'projective identification'. Klein imagined this function as a defense which contributes to the normal development of the infant, including ego structure and the development of object relations. The introjection of the good breast provides a location where one can hide from persecution, an early step in developing

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1896-438: A frightened confused self who has been neglected by a remote and indifferent parent. If these events are repeated again and again, the child's unconscious groups the memories into a view of the self and a view of the parent, both which are too toxic and upsetting to be allow into consciousness. The paired dissociations of self and object that accrued from rejections were called the antilibidinal ego (the child's frightened self) and

2054-773: A leading role in Hungarian psychoanalysis and his son, John, was born. He was employed at the Budapest Psychoanalytical Institute becoming its director in 1935 after Ferenczi died. Clara Lazar Geroe was one of his students. The political conditions in Hungary made life and psychotherapy very difficult for Jews. John Rickman advised all Jewish analysts to leave and with his assistance Balint emigrated to London settling in Manchester , England, in early 1939, where Bálint became Clinical Director of

2212-705: A means of "rearousing [Freud's] affection". Eckstein nonetheless continued her analysis with Freud. She was restored to full mobility and went on to practice psychoanalysis herself. Freud, who had called Fliess "the Kepler of biology", later concluded that a combination of a homoerotic attachment and the residue of his "specifically Jewish mysticism" lay behind his loyalty to his Jewish friend and his consequent overestimation of both his theoretical and clinical work. Their friendship came to an acrimonious end with Fliess angry at Freud's unwillingness to endorse his general theory of sexual periodicity and accusing him of collusion in

2370-552: A medium, an object, on a specific focus. The central thesis in Melanie Klein 's object relations theory was that objects play a decisive role in the development of a subject and can be either part-objects or whole-objects, i.e. a single organ (a mother's breast) or a whole person (a mother). Consequently, both a mother or just the mother's breast can be the focus of satisfaction for a drive. Furthermore, according to traditional psychoanalysis, there are at least two types of drives,

2528-604: A more general readership, Freud applied his theories outside the clinical setting in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) and Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905). In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality , published in 1905, Freud elaborates his theory of infantile sexuality, describing its "polymorphous perverse" forms and the functioning of the "drives", to which it gives rise, in

2686-524: A necessary precondition for psychoneuroses (hysteria and obsessional neurosis), a formulation now known as Freud's seduction theory . In the light of his self-analysis, Freud abandoned the theory that every neurosis can be traced back to the effects of infantile sexual abuse, now arguing that infantile sexual scenarios still had a causative function, but it did not matter whether they were real or imagined and that in either case, they became pathogenic only when acting as repressed memories. This transition from

2844-495: A positive omen for the boy's future. In 1859, the Freud family left Freiberg. Freud's half-brothers immigrated to Manchester , England, parting him from the "inseparable" playmate of his early childhood, Emanuel's son, John. Jakob Freud took his wife and two children (Freud's sister, Anna, was born in 1858; a brother, Julius born in 1857, had died in infancy) firstly to Leipzig and then in 1860 to Vienna where four sisters and

3002-446: A radical departure from Freud by positing that humans are fundamentally motivated not by seeking fulfillment of a drive but by seeking the satisfaction that comes of being in relation to real others. Klein and Fairbairn were working along similar lines. Unlike Fairbairn, however, Klein always held that she was not departing from Freudian theory, rather simply elaborating early developmental phenomena consistent with Freudian theory. Within

3160-638: A regular schedule of biannual Congresses commenced after the end of World War I to coordinate their activities and as a forum for presenting papers on clinical and theoretical topics. Abraham and Eitingon founded the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society in 1910 and then the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute and the Poliklinik in 1920. The Poliklinik's innovations of free treatment, and child analysis, and

3318-693: A result of his reading The Interpretation of Dreams , to which he subsequently gave a positive review in the Viennese daily newspaper Neues Wiener Tagblatt . The other three original members whom Freud invited to attend, Alfred Adler , Max Kahane, and Rudolf Reitler, were also physicians and all five were Jewish by birth. Both Kahane and Reitler were childhood friends of Freud who had gone to university with him and kept abreast of Freud's developing ideas by attending his Saturday evening lectures. In 1901, Kahane, who first introduced Stekel to Freud's work, had opened an out-patient psychotherapy institute of which he

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3476-400: A reunion with his loving parents. This pair of self and objects is also contained in the child's unconscious, but he may call them into awareness when he is desperate for comfort and support (Fairbairn, 1952, 102–119). Fairbairn's structural model contains three selves that relate to three aspects of the object. The selves do not know or relate to each other, and the process of dissociation and

3634-428: A sense of safety and warmth, the child's innate "central ego" is able to take in new experiences, which allows the child to expand their contact with the environment beyond the tight orbit of their mother. This is the beginning of the process of differentiation, or separation from the parent, which eventuates into a new and unique individual. As long as the maternal object continues to provide emotional warmth, support, and

3792-414: A sense of safety, the child will continue to develop throughout childhood. However, if the parent fails to consistently provide these factors, the child's emotional and psychological development stops and the child regresses and remains undifferentiated from their mother. The following quote illustrates the basis of Fairbairn's model: The greatest need of a child is to obtain conclusive assurance (a) that he

3950-719: A series of confrontations between their respective viewpoints took place at the meetings of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society in January and February 1911. In February 1911, Adler, then the president of the society, resigned his position. At this time, Stekel also resigned from his position as vice president of the society. Adler finally left the Freudian group altogether in June 1911 to form his own organization with nine other members who had also resigned from

4108-503: A smoker, eventually developing buccal cancer . Freud suggested to Fliess in 1897 that addictions, including that to tobacco, were substitutes for masturbation , "the one great habit." Freud had greatly admired his philosophy tutor, Franz Brentano , who was known for his theories of perception and introspection. Brentano discussed the possible existence of the unconscious mind in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874). Although Brentano denied its existence, his discussion of

4266-440: A substantial effect on the content of psychoanalytic ideas, particularly in respect of their common concerns with depth interpretation and "the bounding of desire by law". During the formative period of his work, Freud valued and came to rely on the intellectual and emotional support of his friend Wilhelm Fliess , a Berlin-based ear, nose, and throat specialist whom he had first met in 1887. Both men saw themselves as isolated from

4424-477: A three-year period, Freud worked in various departments of the hospital. His time spent in Theodor Meynert 's psychiatric clinic and as a locum in a local asylum led to an increased interest in clinical work. His substantial body of published research led to his appointment as a university lecturer or docent in neuropathology in 1885, a non-salaried post but one which entitled him to give lectures at

4582-417: Is a compound of οκνέω (oknéo, to cling) and φιλιά (philia), while philobatism combines again φιλιά (philia), with batism, derived from βατείν (bateín) which means to walk. The acrobat (literally the high-walker) would be an exemplary form of someone who is a philobat precisely in the sense that she gives herself over to a form of walking that is adventurous and dangerous, yet distant as well. Balint suggests that

4740-413: Is a preconception that will not be a thought until experience combines with a realization in the world of experience. The preconception and realization combine to take form as a concept that can be thought. The classic example of this is the infant's observed rooting for the nipple in the first hours of life. The instinctual rooting is the preconception. The provision of the nipple provides the realization in

4898-439: Is allowed to evolve as a place separate from the literalness of the physical world. Through repeated experience with good enough parenting, the internal image that the child has of external others, that is the child's internal object, is modified by experience and the image transforms, merging experiences of good and bad which becomes more similar to the real object (e.g. the mother, who can be both good and bad). In Freudian terms,

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5056-481: Is always the same mother. Unconscious guilt for destructive phantasies arises in response to the continuing love and attention provided by caretakers. [As] fears of losing the loved one become active, a very important step is made in the development. These feelings of guilt and distress now enter as a new element into the emotion of love. They become an inherent part of love, and influence it profoundly both in quality and quantity. From this developmental milestone comes

5214-422: Is dissociation, and they force all memories of parental failures (neglect, indifference or emotional abandonments) into their unconscious. Over time the neglected child develops an ever expanding memory bank of event after event of being neglected. These dissociated interpersonal events are always in pairs, a self in relationship to an object. For example, a child who is neglected dissociates a memory of themselves as

5372-553: Is feeling irritated at the client, or bored, that might be interpreted as a re-enactment of the Antilibidinal Ego and the Bad Object, with the therapist cast in the role of Bad Object. If the therapist can patiently be an empathic therapist through the client's re-enactment, then the client has a new experience to incorporate into their inner object world, hopefully expanding their inner picture of their Good Object. Cure

5530-461: Is genuinely loved as a person by his parents, and (b) that his parents genuinely accept his love. It is only in so far as such assurance is forthcoming in a form sufficiently convincing to enable him to depend safely upon his real objects that he is able to gradually renounce infantile dependence without misgiving. In the absence of such assurance his relationship with his objects is fraught with too much anxiety over separation to enable him to renounce

5688-464: Is never fully effective, according to Klein, as the ego tends towards integration. Klein saw the depressive position as an important developmental milestone that continues to mature throughout the life span. The splitting and part object relations that characterize the earlier phase are succeeded by the capacity to perceive that the other who frustrates is also the one who gratifies. Schizoid defenses are still in evidence, but feelings of guilt, grief, and

5846-477: Is seen as the client being able to receive from their inner Good Object often enough to have a more stable peaceful life. Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( / f r ɔɪ d / FROYD ; German: [ˈziːkmʊnt ˈfrɔʏt] ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud ; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis , a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in

6004-659: The Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse , also edited by Rank. Plans for an international association of psychoanalysts were put in place and these were implemented at the Nuremberg Congress of 1910 where Jung was elected, with Freud's support, as its first president. Freud turned to Brill and Jones to further his ambition to spread the psychoanalytic cause in the English-speaking world. Both were invited to Vienna following

6162-649: The British Psychoanalytical Society , serving as its president until 1944. The Institute of Psychoanalysis was established in 1924 and the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis was established in 1926, both under Jones's directorship. The Vienna Ambulatorium (Clinic) was established in 1922 and the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute was founded in 1924 under the directorship of Helene Deutsch . Ferenczi founded

6320-638: The Galvanic Skin Response , and a lecturer at Zurich University , although still only an assistant to Eugen Bleuler at the Burghölzli Mental Hospital in Zürich. In March 1907, Jung and Ludwig Binswanger , also a Swiss psychiatrist, travelled to Vienna to visit Freud and attend the discussion group. Thereafter, they established a small psychoanalytic group in Zürich. In 1908, reflecting its growing institutional status,

6478-543: The German annexation of Austria in March 1938, Freud left Austria to escape Nazi persecution. He died in exile in the United Kingdom in 1939. In founding psychoanalysis , Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference , establishing its central role in the analytic process. Freud's redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate

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6636-625: The New York Psychoanalytic Society the same year. His English translations of Freud's work began to appear from 1909. Some of Freud's followers subsequently withdrew from the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) and founded their own schools. From 1909, Adler's views on topics such as neurosis began to differ markedly from those held by Freud. As Adler's position appeared increasingly incompatible with Freudianism,

6794-532: The Oedipal period (age 2–5)'. By 1968, then, Balint had 'distinguished three levels of experience, each with its particular ways of relating, its own ways of thinking, and its own appropriate therapeutic procedures'. 'Psychoanalysis begins at level 3 – the level at which a person is capable of a three-sided experience...primarily the Oedipal problems between self, mother, and father'. By contrast, 'the area of

6952-459: The Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory. His analysis of dreams as wish-fulfilments provided him with models for the clinical analysis of symptom formation and the underlying mechanisms of repression . On this basis, Freud elaborated his theory of the unconscious and went on to develop a model of psychic structure comprising id, ego and super-ego . Freud postulated

7110-464: The humanities . It thus continues to generate extensive and highly contested debate concerning its therapeutic efficacy, its scientific status, and whether it advances or hinders the feminist cause. Nonetheless, Freud's work has suffused contemporary Western thought and popular culture. W. H. Auden 's 1940 poetic tribute to Freud describes him as having created "a whole climate of opinion / under whom we conduct our different lives". Sigmund Freud

7268-422: The infant mind by their functions and are termed part objects . The breast that feeds the hungry infant is the "good breast," while a hungry infant that finds no breast understands the breast to be the "bad breast." With a "good enough" facilitating environment, part object functions eventually transform into a comprehension of whole objects. This corresponds with the ability to tolerate ambiguity, to see that both

7426-416: The libido (mythical counterpart: Eros ), and the death drive, mortido (mythical counterpart: Thanatos ). Thus, the objects can be receivers of both love and hate , the affective effects of the libido and the death drive. Ronald Fairbairn was impressed with the work of Klein, particularly in her emphasis on internalized objects, but he objected to the notion that internalization of external objects

7584-474: The pleasure principle is modified by the reality principle . Melanie Klein saw this surfacing from the depressive position as a prerequisite for social life. Moreover, she viewed the establishment of an inside and an outside world as the start of interpersonal relationships. Klein argued that people who never succeed in working through the depressive position in their childhood will, as a result, continue to struggle with this problem in adult life. For example:

7742-786: The psyche , through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst, and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it. Freud was born to Galician Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg , in the Austrian Empire . He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna . Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology and became an affiliated professor in 1902. Freud lived and worked in Vienna having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. Following

7900-615: The "good" and the "bad" breast are a part of the same mother figure. The initial line of thought emerged in 1917 with Sándor Ferenczi . Subsequently, early in the 1930s, Harry Stack Sullivan , established what is known as interpersonal theory. 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 formulated his theory of object relations. The term has been used in many different contexts, which led to different connotations and denotations. While Fairbairn popularized

8058-402: The "goodness" of their parents and eagerly looked forward to being reunited with them. He realized that these children had dissociated and repressed the many physical and emotional outrages that they had been subjected to in the family. Once in the orphanage, these same children lived in a fantasy world of hope and expectation, which prevented them from psychological collapse. The fantasy self that

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8216-621: The (male) acrobat may be thought of as enacting the primal scene when performing in a highly erect form on the tight rope, before eventually returning to mother earth, and the "beautiful young girl" awaiting him. 'Michael Balint [as] part of the independent tradition in British psychoanalysis, [was] influential in setting up groups (now known as "Balint groups") for medical doctors to discuss psychodynamic factors in relation to patients'. " Instead of repeating futile investigations of increasing complexity and cost, and then telling these people there

8374-498: The Basic Fault is characterised by a very peculiar exclusively two-person relationship'; while a 'third area is characterised by the fact that there are no external objects in it' – level number 1. 'Therapeutic failure is attributed by Balint to the analyst's inability to "click in" to the mute needs of the patient who has descended to the level of the basic fault'; and he maintained that 'the basic fault can only be overcome if

8532-571: The Berlin Institute's standardisation of psychoanalytic training had a major influence on the wider psychoanalytic movement. In 1927, Ernst Simmel founded the Schloss Tegel Sanatorium on the outskirts of Berlin , the first such establishment to provide psychoanalytic treatment in an institutional framework. Freud organised a fund to help finance its activities and his architect son, Ernst, was commissioned to refurbish

8690-731: The Budapest Psychoanalytic Institute in 1913 and a clinic in 1929. Psychoanalytic societies and institutes were established in Switzerland (1919), France (1926), Italy (1932), the Netherlands (1933), Norway (1933), and in Palestine (Jerusalem, 1933) by Eitingon, who had fled Berlin after Adolf Hitler came to power. The New York Psychoanalytic Institute was founded in 1931. The 1922 Berlin Congress

8848-624: The Child Guidance Clinic. Here Alice died, leaving Bálint with their son. In 1944 Bálint remarried, but the relationship soon ended, although they were not divorced until 1952. In 1944 his parents, about to be arrested by the Nazis in Hungary, committed suicide. That year Bálint moved from Manchester to London, where he was attached to the Tavistock Clinic and began learning about group work from W.R. Bion ; he also obtained

9006-495: The Congress to advance the impact of Freud's work. A journal, the Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen , was launched in 1909 under the editorship of Jung. This was followed in 1910 by the monthly Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse edited by Adler and Stekel, in 1911 by Imago , a journal devoted to the application of psychoanalysis to the field of cultural and literary studies edited by Rank and in 1913 by

9164-535: The Congress. There were, as Jones records, "forty-two present, half of whom were or became practising analysts." In addition to Jones and the Viennese and Zürich contingents accompanying Freud and Jung, also present and notable for their subsequent importance in the psychoanalytic movement were Karl Abraham and Max Eitingon from Berlin, Sándor Ferenczi from Budapest and the New York-based Abraham Brill . Important decisions were taken at

9322-559: The London psychoanalytic community, a conflict of loyalties took place between Klein and object relations theory (sometimes referred to as "id psychology") and Anna Freud and ego psychology . In London, those who refused to choose sides were termed the "middle school," whose members included Winnicott and Michael Balint . Klein's theories became popular in South America, while Anna Freud's garnered an American allegiance. Anna Freud

9480-560: The Master of Science degree in psychology. In 1949 Bálint met Enid Flora Eichholz , who worked in the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations with a group of social workers and psychologists on the idea of investigating marital problems. Michael Balint became the leader of this group and together they developed what is now known as the "Balint group": a group of physicians sharing the problems of general practice, focussing on

9638-724: The Nervous System at Harvard , who invited Freud to his country retreat where they held extensive discussions over a period of four days. Putnam's subsequent public endorsement of Freud's work represented a significant breakthrough for the psychoanalytic cause in the United States. When Putnam and Jones organised the founding of the American Psychoanalytic Association in May 1911 they were elected president and secretary respectively. Brill founded

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9796-639: The Protestant 'Confession' to avoid one. A civil ceremony for Bernays and Freud took place on 13 September and a religious ceremony took place the following day, with Freud having been hastily tutored in the Hebrew prayers. The Freuds had six children: Mathilde (b. 1887), Jean-Martin (b. 1889), Oliver (b. 1891), Ernst (b. 1892), Sophie (b. 1893), and Anna (b. 1895). From 1891 until they left Vienna in 1938, Freud and his family lived in an apartment at Berggasse 19 , near Innere Stadt . On 8 December 1897 Freud

9954-622: The Salzburg Congress and a division of labour was agreed with Brill given the translation rights for Freud's works, and Jones, who was to take up a post at the University of Toronto later in the year, tasked with establishing a platform for Freudian ideas in North American academic and medical life. Jones's advocacy prepared the way for Freud's visit to the United States, accompanied by Jung and Ferenczi, in September 1909 at

10112-429: The Unconscious ) making it clear that his views were taking a direction quite different from those of Freud. To distinguish his system from psychoanalysis, Jung called it analytical psychology . Anticipating the final breakdown of the relationship between Freud and Jung, Ernest Jones initiated the formation of a Secret Committee of loyalists charged with safeguarding the theoretical coherence and institutional legacy of

10270-649: The University of Vienna at age 17. He had planned to study law, but joined the medical faculty at the university, where his studies included philosophy under Franz Brentano , physiology under Ernst Brücke , and zoology under Darwinist professor Carl Claus . In 1876, Freud spent four weeks at Claus's zoological research station in Trieste , dissecting hundreds of eels in an inconclusive search for their male reproductive organs. In 1877, Freud moved to Ernst Brücke's physiology laboratory where he spent six years comparing

10428-518: The University of Vienna. In 1886 Freud resigned his hospital post and entered private practice specializing in "nervous disorders". The same year he married Martha Bernays , the granddaughter of Isaac Bernays , a chief rabbi in Hamburg. Freud was, as an atheist , dismayed at the requirement in Austria for a Jewish religious ceremony and briefly considered, before dismissing, the prospect of joining

10586-632: The Wednesday group was reconstituted as the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society with Freud as president, a position he relinquished in 1910 in favor of Adler in the hope of neutralizing his increasingly critical standpoint. The first woman member, Margarete Hilferding , joined the Society in 1910 and the following year she was joined by Tatiana Rosenthal and Sabina Spielrein who were both Russian psychiatrists and graduates of

10744-651: The Zürich University medical school. Before the completion of her studies, Spielrein had been a patient of Jung at the Burghölzli and the clinical and personal details of their relationship became the subject of an extensive correspondence between Freud and Jung. Both women would go on to make important contributions to the work of the Russian Psychoanalytic Society founded in 1910. Freud's early followers met together formally for

10902-436: The actual, external caretakers. Objects are usually internalized images of one's mother , father , or other primary caregiver. However, they can also consist of parts of a person, such as an infant relating to the breast rather than to their mother as a whole person. Later experiences can reshape these early patterns, but objects often continue to exert a strong influence throughout life. Objects are initially comprehended in

11060-1046: The approach of his friend and collaborator, Josef Breuer , in a type of hypnosis that was different from the French methods he had studied, in that it did not use suggestion. The treatment of one particular patient of Breuer's proved to be transformative for Freud's clinical practice. Described as Anna O. , she was invited to talk about her symptoms while under hypnosis (she would coin the phrase " talking cure "). Her symptoms became reduced in severity as she retrieved memories of traumatic incidents associated with their onset. The inconsistent results of Freud's early clinical work eventually led him to abandon hypnosis, having concluded that more consistent and effective symptom relief could be achieved by encouraging patients to talk freely, without censorship or inhibition, about whatever ideas or memories occurred to them. He called this procedure " free association ". In conjunction with this, Freud found that patients' dreams could be fruitfully analyzed to reveal

11218-400: The attitude of infantile dependence: for such a renunciation would be equivalent in his eyes to forfeiting all hope of ever obtaining the satisfaction of his unsatisfied emotional needs. Frustration of his desire to be loved as a person and have his love accepted is the greatest trauma that a child can experience (Fairbairn, 1952:39–40). The counterintitutive result of maternal (or paternal, if

11376-512: The bad object. The good object who then arrives is not the object which did not arrive. Likewise, the infant who destroyed the bad object is not the infant who loves the good object. In phantasy, the good internal mother can be psychically destroyed by the aggressive impulses. It is crucial that the real parental figures are around to demonstrate the continuity of their love. In this way, the child perceives that what happens to good objects in phantasy does not happen to them in reality. Psychic reality

11534-420: The brains of humans with those of other vertebrates such as frogs, lampreys as well as also invertebrates, for example crayfish . His research work on the biology of nervous tissue proved seminal for the subsequent discovery of the neuron in the 1890s. Freud's research work was interrupted in 1879 by the obligation to undertake a year's compulsory military service. The lengthy downtimes enabled him to complete

11692-553: The break finally came in 1926 when Rank resigned from his official posts in the IPA and left Vienna for Paris. His place on the committee was taken by Anna Freud . Rank eventually settled in the United States where his revisions of Freudian theory were to influence a new generation of therapists uncomfortable with the orthodoxies of the IPA. After the founding of the IPA in 1910, an international network of psychoanalytical societies, training institutes, and clinics became well established and

11850-517: The building. It was forced to close in 1931 for economic reasons. The 1910 Moscow Psychoanalytic Society became the Russian Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in 1922. Freud's Russian followers were the first to benefit from translations of his work, the 1904 Russian translation of The Interpretation of Dreams appearing nine years before Brill's English edition. The Russian Institute was unique in receiving state support for its activities, including publication of translations of Freud's works. Support

12008-412: The cause that a person may maintain suffering from intense guilt feelings over the death of a loved one, may be found in the unworked- through depressive position. The guilt is there because of a lack of differentiation between phantasy and reality. It also functions as a defense mechanism to defend the self against unbearable feelings of sadness and sorrow, and the internal object of the loved one against

12166-417: The child begins to recognize that the mother is more than a breast from which to feed. These reactions threaten to overwhelm the infant's sense of self. The way in which the infant resolves the conflict, Klein believed, is reflected in the adult's personality. Sigmund Freud originally identified people in a subject's environment with the term "object" to identify people as the object of drives. Fairbairn took

12324-414: The child develops was called the libidinal self (or libidinal ego) and it related to the very best parts of the parents, who may have shown interest or tenderness toward their child at one time or another, which the needy child then enhances with fantasy. The fantasy enhanced view of the parent was called the exciting object by Fairbairn, which was based on the excitement of the child as he spun his fantasy of

12482-419: The child's turn toward the inner world protects them from the harsh reality of their family environment, but turns them away from external reality: "All represent relationships with internalized objects, to which the individual is compelled to turn in default of satisfactory relationships in the outer world (Fairbairn, 1952, 40 italics in the original). Fairbairn realized that the child's absolute dependence on

12640-442: The complex structuring of unconscious material and to demonstrate the psychic action of repression which, he had concluded, underlay symptom formation. By 1896 he was using the term " psychoanalysis " to refer to his new clinical method and the theories on which it was based. Freud's development of these new theories took place during a period in which he experienced heart irregularities, disturbing dreams and periods of depression,

12798-570: The couple moved to Berlin, where Bálint worked in the biochemical laboratory of Otto Heinrich Warburg (1883–1970), who won the Nobel Prize in 1931. His wife worked in a folklore museum. Bálint now worked on his doctorate in biochemistry, while also working half time at the Berlin Institute of psychoanalysis. Both he and his wife Alice in this period were educated in psychoanalysis. In 1924 the Bálints returned to Budapest , where he soon assumed

12956-575: The death of her fiancé. The close relationship she formed with Freud led to rumours, started by Carl Jung , of an affair. The discovery of a Swiss hotel guest-book entry for 13 August 1898, signed by Freud whilst travelling with his sister-in-law, has been presented as evidence of the affair. Freud began smoking tobacco at age 24; initially a cigarette smoker, he became a cigar smoker. He believed smoking enhanced his capacity to work and that he could exercise self-control in moderating it. Despite health warnings from colleague Wilhelm Fliess , he remained

13114-496: The depressive position brings about an increasing integration in the ego, earlier defenses change in character, becoming less intense and allowing for an increased awareness of psychic reality. In working through depressive anxiety, projections are withdrawn, allowing the other more autonomy, reality, and a separate existence. The infant, whose destructive phantasies were directed towards the bad mother who frustrated, now begins to realize that bad and good, frustrating and satiating, it

13272-404: The desire for reparation gain dominance in the developing mind. In the depressive position, the infant is able to experience others as whole, which radically alters object relationships from the earlier phase. "Before the depressive position, a good object is not in any way the same thing as a bad object. It is only in the depressive position that polar qualities can be seen as different aspects of

13430-409: The development of these structures is called the splitting defense , or splitting . The Fairbairnian object relations therapist imagines that all interactions between the client and the therapist are occurring in the client's inner object relations world, in one of the three dyads. The Fairbairnian object relations therapist also uses their own emotional reactions as therapeutic cues. If the therapist

13588-437: The enhanced status of "professor ordinarius" in 1920). Despite support from the university, his appointment had been blocked in successive years by the political authorities and it was secured only with the intervention of an influential ex-patient, Baroness Marie Ferstel, who (supposedly) had to bribe the minister of education with a valuable painting. Freud continued with the regular series of lectures on his work which, since

13746-403: The etiology of what was then called the "actual neuroses," primarily neurasthenia and certain physically manifested anxiety symptoms. They maintained an extensive correspondence from which Freud drew on Fliess's speculations on infantile sexuality and bisexuality to elaborate and revise his own ideas. His first attempt at a systematic theory of the mind, his Project for a Scientific Psychology ,

13904-507: The existence of libido , sexualised energy with which mental processes and structures are invested and which generates erotic attachments, and a death drive , the source of compulsive repetition, hate, aggression, and neurotic guilt. In his later work, Freud developed a wide-ranging interpretation and critique of religion and culture. Though in overall decline as a diagnostic and clinical practice, psychoanalysis remains influential within psychology , psychiatry , psychotherapy , and across

14062-507: The experience of this stay as catalytic in turning him toward the practice of medical psychopathology and away from a less financially promising career in neurology research. Charcot specialized in the study of hysteria and susceptibility to hypnosis, which he frequently demonstrated with patients on stage in front of an audience. Once he had set up in private practice in Vienna in 1886, Freud began using hypnosis in his clinical work. He adopted

14220-524: The external world. With adequate care, the infant is able to tolerate increasing awareness of experience which is underlain by unconscious phantasy and leads to attainment of consecutive developmental achievements, "the positions" in Kleinian theory. As a specific term, projective identification is introduced by Klein in "Notes on some schizoid mechanisms." [Projection] helps the ego to overcome anxiety by ridding it of danger and badness. Introjection of

14378-736: The father is the primary caregiver) failure is that the child becomes more, rather than less, dependent upon the caregiver, because by failing to meet the child's needs, the child has to remain dependent in the hope that love and support will be forthcoming in the future. Over time, the failed support of the child's developmental needs leaves them further and further behind their similarly aged peers. The emotionally abandoned child must turn to their own resources for comfort, and turns to their inner world with its readily available fantasies, in an attempt to partially meet their needs for comfort, love and later, for success. Often these fantasies involve other figures who have been self-created. According to Fairbairn,

14536-420: The first few years of childhood. The paranoid-schizoid position is characterized by part object relationships. Part objects are a function of splitting, which takes place in phantasy. At this developmental stage, experience can only be perceived as all good or all bad. As part objects, it is the function that is identified by the experiencing self, rather than whole and autonomous others. The hungry infant desires

14694-510: The first time at the Hotel Bristol, Salzburg on 27 April 1908. This meeting, which was retrospectively deemed to be the first International Psychoanalytic Congress, was convened at the suggestion of Ernest Jones , then a London-based neurologist who had discovered Freud's writings and begun applying psychoanalytic methods in his clinical work. Jones had met Jung at a conference the previous year and they met up again in Zürich to organize

14852-431: The formation of sexual identity. The same year he published Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria , which became one of his more famous and controversial case studies . Known as the 'Dora' case study, for Freud it was illustrative of hysteria as a symptom and contributed to his understanding of the importance of transference as a clinical phenomena. In other of his early case studies Freud set out to describe

15010-622: The front, first in Russia, then in the Dolomites. He completed his medical studies in Budapest in 1918. On the recommendation of his future wife, Alice Székely-Kovács , Bálint read Sigmund Freud 's "Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie" (1905) and "Totem und Tabu". He also began attending the lectures of Sándor Ferenczi , who in 1919 became the world's first university professor of psychoanalysis. Bálint married Alice Székely-Kovács and about 1920

15168-419: The good breast who feeds it. Should that breast appear, it is the good breast. If the breast does not appear, the hungry and now frustrated infant, in its distress, has destructive phantasies dominated by oral aggression towards the bad, hallucinated breast. Klein notes that in splitting the object, the ego is also split. The infant who phantasies destruction of the bad breast is not the same infant that takes in

15326-460: The good breast, at least not until obtaining the depressive position, at which point good and bad can be tolerated simultaneously in the same person and the capacity for remorse and reparation ensue. The anxieties of the paranoid schizoid position are of a persecutory nature, fear of the ego's annihilation. Splitting allows good to stay separate from bad. Projection is an attempt to eject the bad in order to control through omnipotent mastery. Splitting

15484-450: The good object is also used by the ego as a defense against anxiety. ... The processes of splitting off parts of the self and projecting them into objects are thus of vital importance for normal development as well as for abnormal object-relation. The effect of introjection on object relations is equally important. The introjection of the good object, first of all the mother's breast, is a precondition for normal development ... It comes to form

15642-515: The good will of their mother made them intolerant of accepting or even acknowledging that they are being abused, because that would weaken their necessary attachment to his parent. The child creates a delusion that they live in a warm cocoon of love, and any information that interferes with this delusion is forcibly expelled from their consciousness, as they cannot face the terror of rejection or abandonment at three, four or five years of age. The defense that children use to maintain their sense of security

15800-459: The group. This new formation was initially called Society for Free Psychoanalysis but it was soon renamed the Society for Individual Psychology . In the period after World War I, Adler became increasingly associated with a psychological position he devised called individual psychology . In 1912, Jung published Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (published in English in 1916 as Psychology of

15958-402: The individual. Instead, this relating takes place "between the stage of the subjective object and that of true object relatedness". The positions of Kleinian theory, underlain by unconscious phantasy, are stages in the normal development of ego and object relationships, each with its own characteristic defenses and organizational structure. The paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions occur in

16116-427: The infant mind. Symbolic thought may now arise, and can only emerge once access to the depressive position has been obtained. With the awareness of the primal split, a space is created in which the symbol, the symbolized, and the experiencing subject coexist. History, subjectivity, interiority, and empathy all become possible. The anxieties characteristic of the depressive position shift from a fear of being destroyed to

16274-471: The infant's life are termed "objects." An adult who experienced neglect or abuse in infancy expects similar behavior from others who, through transference , remind them of the neglectful or abusive parent from their past. The first "object" in an individual's psyche is usually an internalized image of the mother. Internal objects are formed by the patterns in one's experience of being taken care of as an infant, which may or may not be accurate representations of

16432-411: The intricate interaction of theory and technique in the genesis of a new conception of analysis...[using] the catchphrase, borrowed from Rickman, of a "two-body psychology"'. On that basis, Balint thereafter explored the idea of what he called '"the basic fault": this was that there was often the experience in the early two-person relationship that something was wrong or missing, and this carried over into

16590-418: The invitation of Stanley Hall , president of Clark University , Worcester, Massachusetts, where he gave five lectures on psychoanalysis. The event, at which Freud was awarded an Honorary Doctorate, marked the first public recognition of Freud's work and attracted widespread media interest. Freud's audience included the distinguished neurologist and psychiatrist James Jackson Putnam , Professor of Diseases of

16748-438: The life span. The depressive position occurs during the second quarter of the first year. Prior to that the infant is in the paranoid-schizoid position, which is characterized by persecutory anxieties and the mechanisms of splitting, projection, introjection, and omnipotence—which includes idealizing and denial—to defend against these anxieties. Depressive and paranoid-schizoid modes of experience continue to intermingle throughout

16906-421: The loving aspects of their parents to counteract the hateful components. Fairbairn's model also emphasized the internalization of external objects, but his view of internalization was not based on instinctual drive, but rather the child's normal desire to understand the world around them. Fairbairn began his theory with his observation of the child's absolute dependency on the good will of their mother. The infant

17064-464: The mid-1880s as a docent of Vienna University, he had been delivering to small audiences every Saturday evening at the lecture hall of the university's psychiatric clinic. From the autumn of 1902, a number of Viennese physicians who had expressed interest in Freud's work were invited to meet at his apartment every Wednesday afternoon to discuss issues relating to psychology and neuropathology. This group

17222-512: The mommy that broke your arm?" "I was bad," the girl replied. From this exchange, he theorized that she needed to believe that her love object (mother) was entirely good to firmly believe she would one day receive the love and nurturing she needed—in an attempt to recuperate these needs, she used the moral defense to make herself bad in order to preserve her mother's goodness. Klein termed the psychological aspect of instinct unconscious phantasy (deliberately spelled with 'ph' to distinguish it from

17380-515: The moral evil so the caretaker-object can be regarded as good. This is a use of splitting as a defense to maintain an attachment relationship in an unsafe world. In one particular example of this circumstance, Fairbairn introduced a four-year-old girl who had suffered a broken arm at the hands of her mother to a doctor friend of his, who told the little girl that they were going to find her a new parent. The girl, now panicked and unhappy, replied that she wanted her "real mommy." Fairbairn asked, "You mean

17538-403: The most formidable intellect among the early Freud circle, was a socialist who in 1898 had written a health manual for the tailoring trade. He was particularly interested in the potential social impact of psychiatry. Max Graf , a Viennese musicologist and father of " Little Hans ", who had first encountered Freud in 1900 and joined the Wednesday group soon after its initial inception, described

17696-420: The mother-infant relationship...a key paper on "Primary Object-Love" dates from 1937'. Thereafter, developing an idea of John Rickman, he argued that 'mental function is quite different, and needs to be described differently, in three-person and two-person relationships, and different in creative activity alone'. Lacan wrote (almost approvingly) that 'Michael Balint has analysed in a thoroughly penetrating way

17854-488: The nature of his disastrous role, and in subsequent letters maintained a tactful silence on the matter or else returned to the face-saving topic of Eckstein's hysteria. Freud ultimately, in light of Eckstein's history of adolescent self-cutting and irregular nasal (and menstrual) bleeding, concluded that Fliess was "completely without blame", as Eckstein's post-operative haemorrhages were hysterical "wish-bleedings" linked to "an old wish to be loved in her illness" and triggered as

18012-418: The opposite, a state of mind where one is at an absolute distance to objects. Balint writes: "[...] for the philobat the world is structured by safe distance and sight, and for the ocnophil by physical proximity and touch. In the event of fear or anxiety, the reaction of the ocnophil is to get as near as possible to his object, to squat or sit down, go on all fours, lean towards, or even press his whole body to

18170-411: The outer world, he is engaged in testing his phantasies in a reality setting. I want to suggest that the origin of thought lies in this process of testing phantasy against reality; that is, that thought is not only contrasted with phantasy, but based on it and derived from it. The role of unconscious phantasy is essential in the development of a capacity for thinking. In Bion's terms, the phantasy image

18328-432: The patient is allowed to regress to a state of oral dependence on the analyst...and experience a new beginning'. Along with his wife, Enid Balint, and Paul H. Ornstein, Balint developed a process of brief psychotherapy he termed "focal psychotherapy", in which 'one specific problem presented by the patient is chosen as the focus of interpretation'. The therapy was carefully targeted around that key area to avoid (in part)

18486-468: The plagiarism of his work. After Fliess failed to respond to Freud's offer of collaboration over the publication of his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in 1906, their relationship came to an end. In October 1885, Freud went to Paris on a three-month fellowship to study with Jean-Martin Charcot , a renowned neurologist who was conducting scientific research into hypnosis . He was later to recall

18644-403: The pre-oedipal, oral phase of development. In contrast to Fairbairn and later Guntrip, Klein believed that both good and bad objects are introjected by the infant, the internalization of good objects being essential to the development of healthy ego function. Klein conceptualized the depressive position as "the most mature form of psychological organization", which continues to develop throughout

18802-406: The prevailing clinical and theoretical mainstream because of their ambitions to develop radical new theories of sexuality. Fliess developed highly eccentric theories of human biorhythms and a nasogenital connection which are today considered pseudoscientific. He shared Freud's views on the importance of certain aspects of sexuality – masturbation , coitus interruptus , and the use of condoms – in

18960-473: The protecting object. Parallel with this he turns his face away, even shuts his eyes, trying not to see the danger. The reaction of the philobat is what is generally called the heroic one: turning towards the approaching danger, facing it in order to watch it, keeping away from objects that offer false security, standing upright on his own." Balint links these two dispositions to the general question of how people relate to situations of danger, specifically that of

19118-465: The psychoanalytic movement. Formed in the autumn of 1912, the Committee comprised Freud, Jones, Abraham, Ferenczi, Rank, and Hanns Sachs . Max Eitingon joined the Committee in 1919. Each member pledged himself not to make any public departure from the fundamental tenets of psychoanalytic theory before he had discussed his views with the others. After this development, Jung recognised that his position

19276-399: 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 feelings of dependence as

19434-519: The rejecting object (the indifferent or absent parent). Thus, in addition to the conscious central ego, which relates to the nurturing and supportive parts of the parent (called the ideal object), the child has a second view of self and object in his unconscious: the antilibidinal ego and the rejecting object. No child can live in a world devoid of hope for the future. Fairbairn had a part time position in an orphanage, where he saw neglected and abused children. He noticed that they created fantasies about

19592-408: The responses of the doctors to their patients; the first group of practising physicians was established in 1950. Michael and Enid married in 1958. In 1968 Balint became president of the British Psychoanalytical Society . The Michael-Balint-Institut für Psychoanalyse, Psychotherapie und analytische Kinder- und Jugendlichen- Psychotherapie in Hamburg is named for him. Balint 'took an early interest in

19750-520: The risk that 'the focal therapy would have degenerated into long-term psychotherapy or psychoanalysis'. Here as a rule interpretation remained 'entirely on the whole-person adult level...it was the intention to reduce the intensity of the feelings in the therapeutic relationship '. In accordance with the thinking of other members of 'what is known as the British independent perspective ...such as W. R. D. Fairbairn and D. W. Winnicott ', great stress

19908-409: The ritual and atmosphere of the early meetings of the society: The gatherings followed a definite ritual. First one of the members would present a paper. Then, black coffee and cakes were served; cigars and cigarettes were on the table and were consumed in great quantities. After a social quarter of an hour, the discussion would begin. The last and decisive word was always spoken by Freud himself. There

20066-449: The same object." Increasing nearness of good and bad brings a corresponding integration of ego. In a development which Grotstein terms the "primal split", the infant becomes aware of separateness from the mother. This awareness allows guilt to arise in response to the infant's previous aggressive phantasies when bad was split from good. The mother's temporary absences allow for continuous restoration of her "as an image of representation" in

20224-456: The symptomatology of obsessional neurosis in the case of the Rat man , and phobia in the case of Little Hans . In 1902, Freud, at last, realised his long-standing ambition to be made a university professor. The title "professor extraordinarius" was important to Freud for the recognition and prestige it conferred, there being no salary or teaching duties attached to the post (he would be granted

20382-485: The term "object relations," 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 —which argued that the primary motivation of the child is object seeking rather than drive gratification—is becoming increasingly recognized. Klein felt that

20540-609: The theory of infantile sexual trauma as a general explanation of how all neuroses originate to one that presupposes autonomous infantile sexuality provided the basis for Freud's subsequent formulation of the theory of the Oedipus complex . Freud described the evolution of his clinical method and set out his theory of the psychogenetic origins of hysteria, demonstrated in several case histories, in Studies on Hysteria published in 1895 (co-authored with Josef Breuer ). In 1899, he published The Interpretation of Dreams in which, following

20698-409: The thrill, translated as "Angstlust" (the lust of anxiety) into German, although Balint is careful to separate the two in the preface of the German translation. In Balint's mind, people tend to regress into either one of these primitive mental states when faced with anxiety, and therein they express essential attachment experiences. Ocnophilia literally refers to a philia of clinging into something, and

20856-491: The time, and also because he was overwhelmed by the "wealth of ideas" he encountered when he read Nietzsche. Freud sometimes would deny the influence of Nietzsche's ideas. One historian quotes Peter L. Rudnytsky, who says that based on Freud's correspondence with his adolescent friend Eduard Silberstein, Freud read Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy and probably the first two of the Untimely Meditations when he

21014-549: The tissue of the nose and genitalia were linked, was curable by removal of part of the middle turbinate . Fliess's surgery proved disastrous, resulting in profuse, recurrent nasal bleeding; he had left a half-metre of gauze in Eckstein's nasal cavity whose subsequent removal left her permanently disfigured. At first, though aware of Fliess's culpability and regarding the remedial surgery in horror, Freud could bring himself only to intimate delicately in his correspondence with Fliess

21172-402: The tradition, he came to be known for his Torah study . He and Freud's mother, Amalia Nathansohn , who was 20 years younger and his third wife, were married by Rabbi Isaac Noah Mannheimer on 29 July 1855. They were struggling financially and living in a rented room, in a locksmith's house at Schlossergasse 117 when their son Sigmund was born. He was born with a caul , which his mother saw as

21330-427: The unbearable rage of the self, which, it is feared, could destroy the internal object forever. Wilfred Bion articulates the dynamic nature of the positions, a point emphasised by Thomas Ogden , and expanded by John Steiner in terms of '"The equilibrium between the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive positions"'. Ogden and James Grotstein have continued to explore early infantile states of mind, and incorporating

21488-437: The unconscious probably helped introduce Freud to the concept. Freud owned and made use of Charles Darwin 's major evolutionary writings and was also influenced by Eduard von Hartmann 's The Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869). Other texts of importance to Freud were by Fechner and Herbart , with the latter's Psychology as Science arguably considered to be of underrated significance in this respect. Freud also drew on

21646-408: The very helplessness of the child is sufficient to render him dependent in an unconditional sense...He has no alternative but to accept or reject his object – an alternative that is liable to present itself to him as a choice between life and death (Fairbairn, 1952, 47). The model is completely interpersonal in that there are no biological drives of inherited instincts. When the maternal object provides

21804-518: The withdrawal of Adler and Jung from it. The final defection from Freud's inner circle occurred following the publication in 1924 of Rank's The Trauma of Birth which other members of the Committee read as, in effect, abandoning the Oedipus Complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytic theory. Abraham and Jones became increasingly forceful critics of Rank and though he and Freud were reluctant to end their close and long-standing relationship

21962-413: The word 'fantasy'). Phantasy is a given of psychic life which moves outward towards the world. These image-potentials are given a priority with the drives and eventually allow the development of more complex states of mental life. Unconscious phantasy in the infant's emerging mental life is modified by the environment as the infant has contact with reality. From the moment the infant starts interacting with

22120-493: The work of Donald Meltzer , Esther Bick and others, postulate a position preceding the paranoid-schizoid. Grotstein, following Bion, also hypothesizes a transcendent position which emerges following attainment of the depressive position. This aspect of both Ogden and Grotstein's work remains controversial for many within classical object relations theory. Sigmund Freud developed the concept object relation to describe or emphasize that bodily drives satisfy their need through

22278-544: The work of Theodor Lipps , who was one of the main contemporary theorists of the concepts of the unconscious and empathy. Though Freud was reluctant to associate his psychoanalytic insights with prior philosophical theories, attention has been drawn to analogies between his work and that of both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche . In 1908, Freud said that he occasionally read Nietzsche, and was strongly fascinated by his writings, but did not study him, because he found Nietzsche's "intuitive insights" resembled too much his own work at

22436-660: The world of experience, and through time, with repeated experience, the preconception and realization combined to create the concept. Mental capacity builds upon previous experience as the environment and infant interact. The first bodily experiences begin to build up the first memories, and external realities are progressively woven into the texture of phantasy. Before long, the child's phantasies are able to draw upon plastic images as well as sensations—visual, auditory, kinæsthetic, touch, taste, smell images, etc. And these plastic images and dramatic representations of phantasy are progressively elaborated along with articulated perceptions of

22594-582: Was a Hungarian psychoanalyst who spent most of his adult life in England. He was a proponent of the Object Relations school. Balint was born Mihály Maurice Bergsmann in Budapest , the son of a practising physician. It was against his father's will that he changed his name to Bálint Mihály. He also changed religion, from Judaism to Unitarian Christianity . During World War I Bálint served at

22752-496: Was abruptly annulled in 1924, when Joseph Stalin came to power, after which psychoanalysis was denounced on ideological grounds. After helping found the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1911, Ernest Jones returned to Britain from Canada in 1913 and founded the London Psychoanalytic Society. In 1919, he dissolved this organisation and, with its core membership purged of Jungian adherents, founded

22910-603: Was based on the death instinct. The death instinct is a remnant of the Freudian model that was emphasized in Klein's model, and her model assumes that human behavior is motivated by a struggle between the instinctual forces of love and hate. Klein believed that each human being was born with an inborn death instinct which motivated the child to imagine hurting their mother during the schizoid period of development. The child attempts to protect themselves from becoming overwhelmed by hate by internalizing, or taking into themselves, memories of

23068-455: Was born to Ashkenazi Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg , in the Austrian Empire (in Czech Příbor, now Czech Republic ), the first of eight children. Both of his parents were from Galicia . His father, Jakob Freud , a wool merchant, had two sons, Emanuel and Philipp, by his first marriage. Jakob's family were Hasidic Jews and, although Jakob himself had moved away from

23226-489: Was called the Wednesday Psychological Society ( Psychologische Mittwochs-Gesellschaft ) and it marked the beginnings of the worldwide psychoanalytic movement. Freud founded this discussion group at the suggestion of the physician Wilhelm Stekel . Stekel had studied medicine; his conversion to psychoanalysis is variously attributed to his successful treatment by Freud for a sexual problem or as

23384-423: Was dependent on their maternal object (or caretaker) for providing them with all of his physical and psychological needs, as Fairbairn noted in the following passage: The outstanding feature of infantile dependence is its unconditional character. The infant is completely dependent upon its object not only for his existence and physical well being, but also for the satisfaction of his psychological needs...In contrast,

23542-811: Was developed as a metapsychology with Fliess as interlocutor. However, Freud's efforts to build a bridge between neurology and psychology were eventually abandoned after they had reached an impasse, as his letters to Fliess reveal, though some ideas of the Project were to be taken up again in the concluding chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams . Freud had Fliess repeatedly operate on his nose and sinuses to treat "nasal reflex neurosis", and subsequently referred his patient Emma Eckstein to him. According to Freud, her history of symptoms included severe leg pains with consequent restricted mobility, as well as stomach and menstrual pains. These pains were, according to Fliess's theories, caused by habitual masturbation which, as

23700-480: Was initiated into the German Jewish cultural association B'nai B'rith , to which he remained linked for all his life. Freud gave a speech on the interpretation of dreams, which had an enthusiastic reception. It anticipated the book of the same name , which was published for the first time two years later. In 1896, Minna Bernays, Martha Freud's sister, became a permanent member of the Freud household after

23858-697: Was laid upon the creative role of the patient in focal therapy: 'To our minds, an "independent discovery" by the patient has the greatest dynamic power'. It has been suggested that it was in fact this 'work of Michael Balint and his colleagues which led to time-limited therapies being rediscovered'. Michael Balint introduced two new concepts into psychoanalytic language in his book Thrills and Regression : ocnophilia and philobatism. The two terms refer to two types of orienting oneself toward object relationships, with ocnophilia consisting in stubbornly attaching oneself to objects, and being unwilling to exist in an empty space without such objects, while philobatism refers to

24016-443: Was nothing wrong with them, Balint taught active search for causes of anxiety and unhappiness, and treatment by remedial education aiming at insight, rather than tablets aiming at suppression of symptoms." Such seminars provided opportunities for GPs 'to discuss with each other and with him aspects of their work with patients for which they had previously felt ill-equipped. Since his death the continuance of this work has been assured by

24174-474: Was particularly influential in American psychoanalysis in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. American ego psychology was furthered in the works of Hartmann, Kris, Loewenstein, Rapaport, Erikson, Jacobson, and Mahler . Fairbairn described how people who were abused as children internalize that experience. The "moral defense" is the tendency seen in survivors of abuse to take all the bad upon themselves, each yielding

24332-457: Was seventeen. Freud bought Nietzsche's collected works in 1900; telling Wilhelm Fliess that he hoped to find in Nietzsche's works "the words for much that remains mute in me." Later, he said he had not yet opened them. Freud came to treat Nietzsche's writings, according to Peter Gay, "as texts to be resisted far more than to be studied." His interest in philosophy declined after he decided on

24490-473: Was the atmosphere of the foundation of a religion in that room. Freud himself was its new prophet who made the heretofore prevailing methods of psychological investigation appear superficial. By 1906, the group had grown to sixteen members, including Otto Rank , who was employed as the group's paid secretary. In the same year, Freud began a correspondence with Carl Gustav Jung who was by then already an academically acclaimed researcher into word-association and

24648-581: Was the director in Vienna. In the same year, his medical textbook, Outline of Internal Medicine for Students and Practicing Physicians , was published. In it, he provided an outline of Freud's psychoanalytic method. Kahane broke with Freud and left the Wednesday Psychological Society in 1907 for unknown reasons and in 1923 committed suicide. Reitler was the director of an establishment providing thermal cures in Dorotheergasse which had been founded in 1901. He died prematurely in 1917. Adler, regarded as

24806-594: Was the last Freud attended. By this time his speech had become seriously impaired by the prosthetic device he needed as a result of a series of operations on his cancerous jaw. He kept abreast of developments through regular correspondence with his principal followers and via the circular letters and meetings of the Secret Committee which he continued to attend. Michael Balint Michael Balint ( Hungarian : Bálint Mihály , pronounced [ˈbaːlint ˈmihaːj] ; 3 December 1896 – 31 December 1970)

24964-548: Was untenable and resigned as editor of the Jahrbuch and then as president of the IPA in April 1914. The Zürich branch of the IPA withdrew from membership the following July. Later the same year, Freud published a paper entitled " The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement ", the German original being first published in the Jahrbuch , giving his view on the birth and evolution of the psychoanalytic movement and

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