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Schools and Movements

Object Relations Theory

Clinical Psychology

Object relations theory is a school of psychoanalytic thought that reconceives personality around a person's relationships with internalized images of others, called objects, rather than around the discharge of biological drives. Melanie Klein's papers on early child development in the 1930s and 1940s established its core concepts of splitting and the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions; Ronald Fairbairn's 1952 Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality first formulated it as a systematic theory built on relationships rather than libido; and Donald Winnicott extended it with the transitional object and the good enough mother. The school holds that an infant's relationship with its mother, not the satisfaction of biological drives, primarily shapes adult personality. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Disputed
Founded Year
1952 1
No single founding moment: Sandor Ferenczi's 1917 papers first explored internalized relationships, Melanie Klein's child-analytic work of the 1930s and 1940s built its core content, and Ronald Fairbairn's 1952 book was the first to formulate a systematic object-relations theory of personality. 1952 is recorded here as the year the theory was first named and systematized, not as the whole school's origin.
Central Question
How does an infant's earliest relationship with its caregiver become internalized as a mental representation, an object, that structures personality, emotion and relationships throughout life? 1
Connections

Associated With

Nancy Chodorow, Psychologists

Applied object relations theory to gender development in her influential account of the reproduction of mothering.

Held Differently

Psychoanalysis, Schools and Movements
Source Wikipedia: Object Relations Theory

Founded By

Donald Winnicott, Psychologists
Source Wikipedia: Donald Winnicott
Melanie Klein, Psychologists
Source Wikipedia: Melanie Klein
Ronald Fairbairn, Psychologists
Source Wikipedia: Ronald Fairbairn

In Branch

Clinical Psychology, Branches of Psychology
Source Wikipedia: Object Relations Theory
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Object Relations Theory
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Introduction
    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.
  • History section
    The initial line of thought emerged in 1917 with Sandor Ferenczi. Subsequently, early in the 1930s, Harry Stack Sullivan, established what is known as interpersonal theory. British psychologists Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, and Harry Guntrip extended object relations theory during the 1940s and 1950s. In 1952, Ronald Fairbairn formulated his theory of object relations.
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Wikipedia: Melanie Klein
Wikimedia FoundationFounded By: Melanie Klein, Introduction
Quote, Founded By: Melanie Klein, Introduction
She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory.
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Wikipedia: Ronald Fairbairn
Wikimedia FoundationFounded By: Ronald Fairbairn, Introduction
Quote, Founded By: Ronald Fairbairn, Introduction
a central figure in the development of the object relations theory of psychoanalysis
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Wikipedia: Donald Winnicott
Wikimedia FoundationFounded By: Donald Winnicott, Introduction
Quote, Founded By: Donald Winnicott, Introduction
was especially influential in the field of object relations theory and developmental psychology
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