Editing Object relations theory (section)

==History==
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.<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]], and [[Harry Guntrip]] extended object relations theory during the 1940s and 1950s. In 1952, [[Ronald Fairbairn]] formulated his theory of object relations.<ref name=":2">Fairbairn, W.R.D. (1952). ''Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality''. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.</ref>

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," 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 feelings of dependence as 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.<ref>Gomez, 1997, p. 12</ref>

[[Sigmund 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 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 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]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mitchell |first=Stephen A. |title=Influence and Autonomy in Psychoanalysis |publisher=Routledge |year=1997 |isbn=9780881634495 |location=New York, NY |pages=101}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=The Freud-Klein Controversies 1941-45 |publisher=Routledge |year=1992 |editor-last=King |editor-first=Pearl |location=London |id={{ASIN|0415082749|country=ca}} |editor2-last=Steiner |editor2-first=Riccardo}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Other Banalities: Melanie Klein Revisited |publisher=Routledge |year=2006 |editor-last=Mills |editor-first=Jon |location=London}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Hughes |first=Judith M. |title=Reshaping the Psychoanalytic Domain: The Work of Melanie Klein, W.R.D. Fairbairn, and D.W. Winnicott |publisher=University of California Press |year=1990}}</ref> In London, those who refused to choose sides were termed the "middle school," whose members included [[D.W. Winnicott|Winnicott]] and [[Michael Balint]]. Klein's theories became popular in South America, while Anna Freud's garnered an American allegiance.<ref>{{Cite book
|title     = Freud in the Pampas: The Emergence and Development of a Psychoanalytic Culture in Argentina
|last      = Ben Plotkin
|first     = Mariano
|publisher = Stanford University Press
|year      = 2001
|isbn      = 9780804740609
|url       = http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=669}}</ref> Anna Freud 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 [[Margaret Mahler|Mahler]]. 

===Fairbairn's theory of attachment===
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 the moral evil so the caretaker-object can be regarded as good. This is a use of [[Splitting (psychology)|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 the mommy that broke your arm?" "I was bad," the girl replied.<ref name="Columbia University Press">{{cite book|last1=Celani|first1=David|title=Fairbairn's Object Relations Theory in the Clinical Setting|date=2010|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=978-0231149075}}</ref> 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.