Objective Relations Theory

Projective Identification copyright 1996 Hannah Fox, CSW, BCD every(prenominal) rights reserved may non be reproduced without permission of Hannah Fox (emailprotected com) This document can be effectuate at http//www. tendency- transaction. com This presentation testament explore several concepts and techniques within the Object Relations theory of family therapy which, if understood, provides a framework for looking at gibes and families. Before sloping about this approach to family therapy, I would worry to develop what object transaction theory is all about.Object Relations Theory was originated in England by a gathering of British psychoanalysts, including Klein, Balint, F picnicburn, Winnicott, and Guntrip. Object relations theory was a break from Freuds obtain model, and differs from it as follows Freuds model held that a newborn child is driven by animal instincts, such as hunger, thirst, and pleasure, entirely cannot relate to others. Relationships with others provided develop later in the course of satisfying those ask. In this sense, Freuds model considers human relationships to be secondary.In contrast, object relations theory maintains that the infant can relate to others at a very early age and that relationships with others be, therefore, primary. The drive to attach oneself to an object is considered to be the major motivating force. Since we are talking about object relations theory, this is a trusty time to ask what an object is. In object relations theory, the word object is used with a very specific meaning. Its not literally a physical per boy, just an immanent mental structure that is formed throughout early cultivation.This mental structure is build through a series of experiences with significant others through a psychic process called introjection. Because an infants earliest experiences are unremarkably with its niggle, she is usually the first internal object formed by the infant. regular(a)tually, the father and other significant people in any case be get along with internalized objects. Introjection, the process of creating internal mental objects, leads to another process called divorceting. Splitting occurs because the infant cannot tolerate authorized feelings such as rage and disposition, which occur in all normal development.As a result, the infant has to split arrive at intermits of itself and repress them. What happens to those repressed split-off parts? They are dealt with through another important process, called projective assignment. Projective identification itself is a very specific part of object relations theory. It is a defense mechanism which was conceptualized by Melanie Klein in 1946, having evolved from her extensive study and work with children. According to Klein, projective identification consists of splitting off parts of the self, intercommunicate them into another person, and then identifying with them in the other person.For example, the earliest rel ationship the infant has with its niggle is feeding and touching, plainly the flummox is not always able to respond quickly enough to the infants need. Since the natural rage and longing the infant feels at such times are intolerable, to survive these feelings the infant splits them off and represses them from its consciousness. The split offfeelings can be thought of as other parts of the self (ego). When such splitting operates place, the infant is free of the rage but has placed that part of itself inside the fuck off.To make itself whole again it must(prenominal) identify with the get under ones skin. The mother may or may not allow herself to puzzle the cntainer for the infants negative feelings. Even if she doesnt, the projective identification still occurs. The preceding(prenominal) process begins in the first half year of disembodied spirit, kn stimulate as the paranoid-schizoid position. It is characterized by an ability to distinguish good feelings from bad, but an inability to distinguish the mother from the self. Depending on how arranged the mothering is, the infant may or may not progress to a higher level of development knget as the depressive position.In the depressive position, which set forths at about eight months of age, the child manoeuvers back its bad feelings from the mother and unwraps from her. The mother is at a time seen as a separate object, with both good and bad feelings of her own. The infant is aware of its own good and bad feelings. For a child to reach this level of development, the earlier mothering must be accordant. The mother must hasten accepted most of the childs intercommunicate feelings. A child who reaches the depressive position will, in adulthood, be capable of experiencing, at best, such feelings as empathy, or will at least become neurotic.In contrast, if the mothering is not consistent, the child cant take back its projected feelings and splitting sojourns both inside and outside the child. It remains in the paranoid-schizoid position or, at best, a precarious form of the depressive position. This type of development is associated with b darkspotline personalities. In the above infant-mother example, the repressed parts of the self, if unresolved, will remain repressed into adulthood. Those parts will goern the choice of married partner and the nature of marital relationships, and by extension the nature of relationships with children.By the time the couple or family come to therapy the projective identification process has desirely progressed to the point of creation obvious to the therapist, and will be seen in the members carriage toward each other. This is usually not so in individual therapy because it often takes time to build the transfer relationship with the therapist. So what does this mean for the therapist? What does a therapist have to know in order to work with a family, using the object relations approach? The therapist needs to be teach in individual developmental heory from infancy to senescent and to visualise that the internal object world is built up in a child, modified in an adult and re-enacted in the family. The family has a developmental sustenance cycle of its own, and as it goes through its series of tasks from early nurturing of its new members, to emancipation of its adolescents, to taking care of its aging members, the familys adaptation is challenged at every stage by unresolved issues in the adult members early life cycle. Conflicts within any of its individual family members may threaten to disrupt the adaption previously achieved.If any member is inefficient to adapt to new development, pathology, equal projective identification, becomes a stumbling block to future healthy development. The clinical approach is to develop, with the family, an thought of the nature and origins of their current interactional difficulties, starting from their experience in the here- and-now of the therapeutic sessions, and e xploring the unconscious intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts that are pr planeting further healthy development. Interpretation and insight are thus the agents of family change.By uncovering the projective identifications that take place among family members, and having individuals take back their split-off parts, members can be freed to continue healthy development. If further therapy is indicated, individual therapy would be a recommendation. manifestation reduction in individuals is not necessarily a goal here. In position, individual family members may become more symptomatic as projective identificationsare taken back and the members become more anxious. To do this, the therapist needs the following four capabilities . The ability to provide a holding environmentfor the family a place which is consistent so that eventually the family comes to feel comfortable enough to be themselves in the presence of the therapist. 2. An ability to understand the themeof each session, so that a broad theme can be identified over the course of treatment. 3. An ability to interpret the latent content of patients manifest statements. 4. An understanding of unconscious processes like transport and countertransference.Given those tools, it is the therapists agate line to uncover the projective identifications in the family that prevent the children from having a healthy development. Once these projections are uncovered, and the split-off parts given over back to the family members they belong to, children are freer to continue healthy development. Having introduced projective identification, Id like to show how this process operates later in life-in couples and families-and is a framework for doing couple and family therapy. Im going to present dickens cases-one of a couple and one of a family-to show how projective identification works.A male patient of mine with little emulation fell in have a go at it with a woman who subsequently pushed him to be ambitious. As it turned out, the woman had been repressing her own ambition under pressure from a father who didnt believe women should work. This woman was quite intelligent and obtained a schoolmaster degree, yet she chose to stifle her ambition in order to please her father. She remained dependent on her father, both emotionally and financially. The husband, my patient, was a skipper but quite unambitious. His familys philosophy was that one is lucky to have a job and pay the bills.His father had held the like low paying job for twenty years although he, too, had a professional degree. So why did these two people get married? Since it was unacceptable for her to be ambitious, the wife required someone to contain those feelings for her. My patient was the ideal object because, although he had an informal ambition, he had no enate support for these strivings. Therefore, he was predisposed to accept and collude in his wifes projection. What is the effect of projective identification when a couple has children?The following example shows how parents use their children as objects. Fern was a woman in her second marriage with two adolescent children. When Fern was a child, her mother favored her brother. The essence she received from her mother was that men were important and had to be taken care of, while women were stupid and born to serve men. Both of Ferns husbands agreed with her mothers philosophy, so Fern played out most of her married life serving them. When the family came to see me, both children were having emotional problems. The son was a dark user of pot and cocaine.His sister had emotional and learning problems in school. Fern had projected into her son that males were special and demand to be taken care of. Its not hard to see why the son colluded with his mother. The rewards of accepting her projected feelings were too hard to resist, so when he reached adolescence he satisfied his excessive dependency needs with drugs. The message Ferns daughter r eceived was that she was unimportant and stupid. wherefore did Fern project these feelings onto her daughter? Fern grew up unable to develop her own course goals because her other ignored her wishes to go to college.For Fern to feel sufficiently competent and achieve some career success, she had to get rid of feelings that she was stupid and unimportant. So she projected those feelings on to her daughter and was then able to start a small business. To avoid being totally jilted by her mother, the daughter colluded by be stupid and unimportant to herself. Ferns reenactment with her daughter of her mothers relationship with her is a form of projective identification called identification with the aggressor,because Fern is acting as if she is her own mother and her daughter is her (when she was a child).Ferns relationship to her son is in like manner similar to the relationship Ferns mother had to Ferns brother. Because Fern is treating her children so several(predicate)ly, when they grow up they will have very different views of this family. This explains why, in therapy, siblings often talk about the same family very differently. Notice how unresolved feelings from childhood, which Fern split off and repressed, undischargedly affected her relationship with both children. What do you think is going on in her second marriage? Now I will present an actual transcript of part of a session I recently had with this family.As you will see, it illustrates the process of projective identification and will serve as a basis for further discussion. T Fern, I wonder, when Donald was talking about being like Roberta and John asked him a question how did you feel? F What do you mean how did I feel? T When John asked Donald when he figured out that he was like Roberta and Donald said just now. J How do you feel about him saying just now. T And you changed the crush and I wondered what you were feeling. F I dont know. I T Donald owned up to some feelings that he was like his father and that part of what he saw in Roberta was like himself.F Donald is definitely part of D No but what shes saying is that you changed the subject. That is why shes wondering if you have some feelings about that. T Exactly. You seemed to have travel away from what was going on here. John was talking to Donald R She doesnt want us to be like our father. T Maybe that was upsetting to you? R He wasnt good to her. D Subconsciously maybe. Its chummy but its there. F Well, I dont like Martin, naturally. Its true. I dont like him I dont think hes a nice person. R You dont like him at all? D She loves him but doesnt like himF I loved him but I never liked him as a person. I never thought he was a good person that he really cared about me, that he took care of me, that he was ever concerned with me. I remember a couple of things that I remember having a bloody nose one night when I was pregnant and he went out to play racketball and left me alone. Things like that He was mean to me he had no compassion for me. D Thats one thing, Im not like my father. F Im not saying Im move to say I see certain characteristics of their father in them. T How does that make you feel?F How does that make me feel? I dont know. I guess part of it, not too good because I would rather them be above that, that is, above that anger, why cant they rise above that anger. I dont want them to be like that because it didnt get Martin anyplace in life. J I have a very deep question. F I dont know if I want to answer it. J You may not but how can you find that with Roberta and Donald being so much alike in prsonality, like Martin, how do you separate Donalds being like Martin and accepting it from Roberta and saying Roberta is just like her father and not accepting it?F Because Donald never directed his anger at me as a person, as a human being. In other words he never he might have been angry but he never said to me he never was mean to me, whereas Roberta has been mean to me, at tacked me as a person, Donald never attacked me as a person. T Donald attacked himself as a person. D Hmm. T By taking drugs. F yet he never attacked me as a person. D Never, Im not a mean person. I dont have that mean streak in me. T You sure? F You may have it in you D I dont have a mean streak. F Sure, everyone T Who did you direct that meanness to?Roberta directs it out to her mother and who did you direct it to? D I direct it to her. T No R No you directed it at yourself. D Myself, yeah Im mean to myself. F You were destructive to yourself. T So what D scarcely thats different from being destructive to other human beings. F No, maybe you would have been better off being mean to me or somebody else. Or to your father. R Lets get back to Uncle Johns question. J No this is part of the answer. D Yeah Im mean to myself. I still am. But I dont destroy myself with anything with any engaging of substances, but I still am.R What do you mean, you still are? D Im hard on myself, ex act of myself. R See, you would never think that of Donald because he walks around like hes above the world. He does. T But why would somebody walk D But Ive been working on that very heavily now T But why would someone D Thats the way I am its the way I am. T Why would someone walk around like that. D Its very basic when I was on drugs and everything like that and Im fully aware of it, aware that Im conceited and like I have that air about me Im fully aware of it.When I was on drugs I had that part to me but it wasnt as slopped as it is now. T You werent aware of it then? D I wasnt really in control of the fact that I control my conceitedness now I choose to put that on because I have nothing, I have nothing else now. T Right D It seems its like my only defense, to be arrogant and to be conceited because I dont have anything else to back me up so I figure that wall. R Why do you need I dont need anything. D Roberta because when I was on the drugs and everything like that, it was a great wall for me to keep everybody out.Now I want everybody to think big things. Discussion Now lets look at the latent content of this session and identify the projective identifications. Fern was angry at Roberta and not at Donald why? As John pointed out with his question, Fern saw Roberta and Donald very differently, because of her projective identifications into them. Fern saw Roberta as bad and stupid, just as her mother viewed her when she was a child. She put all her badness and negative feelings into Roberta. Roberta then acted out Ferns feelings by being emotionally disturbed and acting stupid.Her emotional problems exacerbated what had been a genuine perceptual impairment. Because of her projective identification, Fern saw Donald as the good son who needed special attention and care, which was what Fern had seen between her own mother and her brother. Because Donald was not fully accepted by his mother, especially for those qualities that were like his natural fa ther, he acted out his mothers feelings. He was good to her but repressed the rejected parts, turning them against himself by secretly taking drugs. Yet, his mother continued to hold him in high regard, even after his habit had been found out.What Fern did was re-create the family constellation in which she had grown up. Because both children were carrying out their mothers inner life, they were unable to grow and develop their own healthy structures. The next step in therapy was to get Fern to take back the split-off parts of herself the devaluing of her daughter and the overvaluing of her son. This should help the children take back the part of themselves which they split off and repressed. In subsequent sessions, Fern and I explored what it was like growing up with her mother.She explained that her mother told her that she was stupid and that her brother was special. Ferns daughter told Fern that she was doing the same thing as her mother and that the daughter felt stupid. Fern r esponded that she had never meant to treat her daughter as stupid. She also realized that her son had many problems and was not so special. In doing so, Fern reclaimed her split-off parts, freeing her daughter to continue a healthier development. Her son was able to leave home and become more independent.