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Object relations theory in psychoanalytic psychology is the process of developing a psyche in relation to others in the environment during childhood. Based on psychodynamic theory, the object relations theory suggests that the way people relate to others and situations in their adult lives is shaped by family experiences during infancy. For example, an adult who experienced neglect or abuse in infancy would expect similar behavior from others who remind them of the neglectful or abusive person from their past. These images of people and events turn into ''objects'' in the unconscious that the person carries into adulthood, and they are used by the unconscious to predict people's behavior in their social relationships and interactions. Internal objects are formed by the patterns emerging in one's repeated subjective experience of the caretaking environment, which may or may not be accurate representations of the actual, external others. In the theory, objects are usually internalized images of one's mother, father, or primary caregiver, although they could also consist of parts of a person such as an infant relating to the breast or things in one's inner world (one's internalized image of others). Later experiences can reshape these early patterns, but objects often continue to exert a strong influence throughout life.〔Greenberg, J. & Mitchell, S. (1983). ''Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory''. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England.〕 Objects are initially comprehended in the infant mind by their functions and are termed ''part objects''.〔 The breast that feeds the hungry infant is the "good breast", while hungry infant that finds no breast is in relation to 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 the "good" and the "bad" breast are a part of the same mother figure.〔 ==History== Otto Rank, coiner of the term "pre-Oedipal," was the first to create a modern theory of "object relations" in the late 1920s. Ronald Fairbairn in 1952 independently formulated it.〔Fairbairn, W.R.D. (1952). ''Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality''. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.〕 The line of thought first emerged in 1917 with Ferenczi and, later, Rank.〔Ogden, T. (2005). ''This Art of Psychoanalysis: Dreaming undreamt dreams and interrupted cries''. NY: Routledge. (p. 27).〕 British psychologists Ronald Fairbairn, Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, Harry Guntrip, Scott Stuart, and others extended object relations theory during the 1940s and 1950s. 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 'what is known as the ''British independent perspective'', which argued that the primary motivation of the child is object seeking rather than drive gratification',〔Glen O. Gabbard, ''Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy'' (Washington, DC 2010) p. 12〕 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.〔Gomez, 1997 p. 12〕 Freud originally identified people in a subject's environment with the term "object" to identify people as the object of drives. Fairbairn took a radical departure from Freud by positing that humans were not seeking satisfaction of the drive, but actually seek the satisfaction that comes in relation to real others. Klein and Fairbairn were working along similar lines, but unlike Fairbairn, Klein always held that she was not departing from Freudian theory, but simply elaborating early developmental phenomena consistent with Freudian theory. Within 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 America, Anna Freud heavily influenced American psychoanalysis in 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. American ego psychology was furthered in the works of Hartmann, Kris, Loewenstein, Rapaport, Erikson, Jacobson, and Mahler. In London, those who refused to choose sides were termed the "middle school," whose members included Michael Balint and D.W. Winnicott. A certain division developed in England between the school of Anna Freud and that of Melanie Klein, which later influenced psychoanalytic politics worldwide. Klein was popularized in South America while A. Freud garnered an American allegiance. Fairbairn revised much of Freud's model of the mind. He identified how people who were abused as children internalize that experience. Fairbairn's "moral defense" is the tendency seen in survivors of abuse to take all the bad upon themselves, each believing he is morally bad so his caretaker can be regarded as good. This is a use of splitting as a defense to maintain an attachment relationship in an unsafe world. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Object relations theory」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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