Object Relations Theory Research Articles

An Object-Relations Analysis of Psalm 131

Psalm 131 employs the metaphorical imagery of an infant and mother to portray the relationship between the psalmist and YHWH. Since this imagery is critical in understanding the psalmist and the overall message of the psalm, I utilize psychoanalytical Object-Relations theory in reading the psalm. This interpretive framework offers insights into the language, structure, and movement of the psalm that might otherwise be overlooked. This essay reveals the foundational role of YHWH, particularly in relation to his absence and presence as primary caregiver in the development of the false self and the restoration of the true self-identity of the psalmist. The restoration of the psalmist’s true self-identity is further supported by the larger canonical context in which the Torah of Psalm 119 functions as an object-relations transitional object for the psalmist.

TO EAT, OR NOT TO EAT? A PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEW ON THE FOOD‐PARENT

Research shows eating disorders increase the mortality rate: anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate and yet an accurate morbidity rate of bulimia nervosa remains hidden. However, research on the endopsychic structural dynamics that perpetuate in patients with eating disorders is scant. This essay depicts the use of Fairbairn's theory of endopsychic personality structure in understanding anorexia nervosa, binge eating disorder and bulimia nervosa. Fairbairn, of the independent group of British object relations theorists, provides a picture of the endopsychic structure based on the conscious and unconscious psychodynamics between partial ego/part‐object dyads. Using three case histories, the following pages illustrate the incessantly present endopsychic permutations of the aforementioned dynamics and the possibility of the entrapment in one of these or swinging from one to the other in eating disorders. The essay also shows that early traumatic experiences are present in the case history of individuals with any one of these eating disorders and despite their manifested behavioural differences, they result from the widening of fissures in the universal split in the psyche due to emotional and/or physical abuse. Finally, using Fairbairn's theory, the analysis in the essay explains the comorbidity of certain eating disorders and borderline personality structure.

‘An experiment with the self’: sensory experience, self-analysis, and object relations theory in Oliver Sacks’ A Leg to Stand On (1984)

ABSTRACT In 1974, neurologist Oliver Sacks was hiking alone in the Norwegian mountains when he severely injured his leg running from a bull. Better known for documenting his patients’ disorders and recovery processes, in the autobiographical A Leg to Stand On (1984) he instead maps the ensuing “chaos” of his own changed body and mind as he grapples with the alteration of core sensory experience and its impact on his sense of self. In this article, I showcase Sacks’ self-analytic narrative, demonstrating the value of reading accounts of sensory experiences of ill health via the lens of psychoanalytic object relations theory. I argue that this this approach can not only help us to see sensory and material experience as intimately tied up with one’s internal object world, but also allows us to understand illness narratives themselves as psychical objects in which authors, readers and critics may have complex investments.

How Long, O Lord? Fairbairn’s Object Relations Theory and the Practice of Lament

The biblical practice of lament has been largely neglected in many modern evangelical Christian contexts in the United States, despite increasing calls to reclaim this spiritual practice. This loss of lament is not without cost, and various negative impacts on individuals and communities have been suggested in the literature. The present article argues that lament cannot be reclaimed by commending its practice only, but psychological obstacles to lament must also be identified and addressed. Toward this end, a view is advanced that lament may be understood as an emotionally dynamic relational act, and that Fairbairn’s object relations theory—including his notion of the moral defense—illuminates dynamics that make lament difficult for some people to engage in fully and authentically, if at all. Practical implications for navigating these dynamics and facilitating greater engagement with lament are discussed to aid the work of those involved in mental health and soul care.

CHILD VIOLENCE: FROM PSYCHOANALYSIS TO THE REALITY OF PROTECTING CHILDREN'S RIGHTS IN BRAZIL

The purpose of the presented material is to summarize the basic psychoanalytic positions on the analysis of human aggressiveness and violent impulses, as well as to analyze the work of South American educators on the problem of violence within the recognition of human rights to a safe life. Methods. The defined theoretical and methodological direction of the analysis of child violence consists of research procedures, bibliographic review, psychoanalytic and socio-pedagogical research. Results. Psychoanalytic positions of interpretation of the phenomenon of violence are represented by Freud's classic generalizations about aggression, sadism and repression of libido. The conceptual understanding of the intrapsychic aspects of the child's violence is supplemented by the provisions of the theories of object relations through various forms of self-destruction of the individual. The socio-historical context of violence is revealed and it is emphasized that violence always contains the fact of violation by one person of the rights and freedoms of another person. The analysis of the works of Brazilian psychoanalysts reveals the specifics of experiencing the "feeling of colonization" in unconscious forms of repressed tension, confrontation and guilt. It is emphasized that various conflict traumas and states of social disintegration should begin with the awareness of just solidarity and human rights. It is also important to be aware of the rights of the child, which is in line with the doctrine of integral protection. The scientific achievements of the scientific school of Professor A.M. Eyng on the study of the problems of violence and children's rights are revealed. The basic positions of cooperation between Ukrainian and Brazilian scientists on the study of psychological norms of quality of life, mental health and well-being of children in humanitarian situations (poverty, wars, environmental disasters, forced displacement, etc.) are outlined. Conclusions. The scientific synthesis of psychoanalysis of child violence and socio-pedagogical generalizations about the child's rights to a safe existence is a new form of practical solution to the problem of protecting the quality of life of the child.

“Everything I Wanted Not to Be”: The Specter of Africa in the Trans Travel Narrative

Previous scholarship has interrogated how transsexual autobiographies recursively construct a gender-coherent subject through travel analogies. Orientalism has been one of the predominant frames through which these trans travel narratives have been interpreted. Through a close reading of Jan Morris’s autobiography, Conundrum, this paper attends to the overwhelming anti-Blackness that scaffolds these voyages to and through the Orient. Exploring how “Black Africa” has been occluded from Orientalist analyses of trans travel narratives, the author asks what might be found by attending specifically to the role of Africa (as a metaphor for Blackened rather than Orientalized geographies) in these autobiographies. Through Black studies, trans studies, affect theory, and Kleinian object relations theory, the essay demonstrates how Blackness grounds both trans travel narratives and the scholarship about them. Through a metacritique of both Orientalism and trans studies, this paper concludes by suggesting that scholars provincialize Orientalism.

"A Christian Counseling Approach toward Object Relations Theory of Winnicott"

"A Christian Counseling Approach toward Object Relations Theory of Winnicott"

‘[M]en’s Dwellings Were Thin Shells’: Uncertain Interiors and Domestic Violence in Ford Madox Ford’s War Writing

The standard image of First World War soldiers is of men in open trenches: waiting to attack or be attacked; walking, sitting, sleeping, dead. Ford’s Parade’s End includes such scenes. But it is a different kind of image which predominates in his war writings and often produces its most memorable passages: images of houses or house-like shelters. The mind seeks protection in such structures; but they offer little security against the destructiveness outside, against the bombardments, gas, shrapnel, bullets. Ford wrote that the experience of war revealed: ‘men’s dwellings were thin shells that could be crushed as walnuts are crushed. … all things that lived and moved and had volition and life might at any moment be resolved into a scarlet viscosity seeping into the earth of torn fields […]’. This realisation works in two ways. The soldier’s sense of vulnerability provokes fantasies of home, solidity, sanctuary, while for the returnee soldier, domestic architecture summons war-visions of its own annihilation: ‘it had been revealed to you’, adds Ford, ‘that beneath Ordered Life itself was stretched, the merest film with, beneath it, the abysses of Chaos’. It is now customary to read war literature through trauma theory. Building on analyses of Ford’s use of repression, but drawing instead on object relations theory, I argue that Ford’s houses of war are not screen memories but images of the failure of repression to screen off devastating experiences. The abysses of Chaos can be seen through the screen or projected upon it. Attending to Ford’s handling of this theme enables a new reading of his war writing and a new case for its coherence. The essay will connect the opening of No More Parades (in a hut, during a bombardment) with the war poem ‘The Old Houses of Flanders’; the postwar poem A House; the memoir It Was the Nightingale (quoted above); and the otherwise puzzling, fictionalised memoir No Enemy, structured in terms of ‘Four Landscapes’ and ‘Certain Interiors’.

Kendini Yenileme: Alan Sillitoe’nun “Balıkçı Teknesi Resmi” Hikâyesinde Kayıp ve Dönüşüm

This study explores the ideas presented by British writer Alan Sillitoe concerning existentialism, focusing on his unique perspective on the theme of loss through the lens of the British object relations theory. Sillitoe’s literary portrayal of the protagonist and his coping mechanisms for grief and loss offer a distinctive perspective to analyze shifts in individual identity. Our focus centres on Sillitoe’s story titled "The Fishing Boat Picture," which allows us to explore the connection between loss, grief, and personal transformation. Through the protagonist—an elderly man who comes to terms with his wife’s passing and discovers a sense of self—this paper presents a framework for comprehending how loss impacts the disruption and rebuilding of one’s identity. Moreover, it sheds light on how psychological experiences of loss can shape individuals’ perception of themselves by emphasizing how moments of loss and grief can lead to profound growth by serving as experiences. Ultimately, this research contributes to a comprehension of the psyche and how we navigate through losses and grief while constructing our identities.

The Analysis of the Novel “The Museum Of Innocence” within the Framework of Bibliotheraphy Based on Object Relations Theory and Attachment Theory

Amaç: Orhan Pamuk’un yapıtlardan biri olan “Masumiyet Müzesi” adlı romanın, nesne ilişkileri kuramı ve bağlanma kuramıyla ilişkilendirilerek psikoterapilerde kullanılan bibliyoterapi çerçevesinde incelenmesi hedeflenmiştir.
 Yöntem: Kitapta yer alan başkarakter Kemal’in davranışlarına yansıyan etkileri ile bağlanma biçimleri; kitaptaki birtakım metinler aracılığı ile nitel inceleme ve değerlendirme yöntemleri ile açıklanmıştır.
 Bulgular: Bu incelemede, Kemal karakterinin davranışları ile kaygılı ve kaçıngan bağlanma biçimleri arasında bir ilişki olabileceği görülmektedir. Roman incelemesi sonucunda, diğer ana karakterlerden olan Füsun ve Sibel’in bakış açılarına oldukça sınırlı şekilde yer verilmesi, Kemal karakterinin ise çoğunlukla mutsuz anlarına odaklanılması ve sergilediği zıt tutumlar sonuç kısmında tartışılmıştır. Ayrıca Kemal’in romandaki diğer karakterlerle kurduğu ilişkiler nesne ilişkileri kuramı ışığında kitaptan örnek metinlerle örneklendirilerek değerlendirilmiştir.
 Sonuç: Bu inceleme sonucunda, psikoterapide kitap kullanımı (bibliyoterapi) açısından romanın değerlendirilmesinin, alanda aktif olarak çalışan ruh sağlığı uzmanlarına katkı sağlaması hedeflenmiştir. Psikoterapilerde; romantik ilişkiler, depresyon, ayrılık kaygısı, ayrılık sonrası kayıp-yas süreci vb. konulardaki sorunların ele alınmasında faydalı olabileceği belirtilebilir.

On the relationship between group analysis and mentalization-based group therapy

In this article we describe and reflect upon the roots of mentalization-based group therapy (MBT-G) and its relationship to group analysis. The original setting for MBT was psychotherapeutic day hospitals that were strongly influenced by group analytic thinking. The challenges from an increasing number of borderline patients initiated theoretical and therapeutic innovations that separated MBT-G from traditional group analysis who responded differently, e.g. by strengthening its ties to object-relational theories that emphasized innate destructive drives. Since then, the dialogue between the two approaches have been meagre in the UK, but more constructive in e.g. Norway and Germany. We argue that MBT-G needs group analytic competence with respect to basic group dynamics, and that group analysis needs revitalization by the theory of mentalizing. We call for dialogues between the two approaches. The authors belong to both camps and speak with reference to experiences in Norway, United Kingdom, Denmark and Germany.

Personal Meanings and Reality of Gendered Socialization in Pakistan

Abstract The socialization of young men can make a difference in social change in patriarchal societies such as Pakistan. This research applies Nancy Chodorow’s (1978) Object Relations Theory to analyze the learning of gender roles for young men. Key informants comprised 30 young men aged 18–30 from mainstream society and semi-structured interviews were carried out in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, Pakistan. The key research objectives were to explore young men’s ideas about socialization in Pakistani culture and how they learn the gender-specific roles. The results of this study reveal that from the age of 8 to 17, boys learn their gender roles and masculine standards. It argues that a cohesive and integrated approach is needed through community, parents, and school-based programs where young men can be socialized to contribute positively to a violence-free, risk-free, equitable society and innovative thinking is needed to socialize young men.

Grotstein의 이중-경로 이론(dual-track theory)을 바탕으로 재조명해본 자아 구조의 발달에 대한 분석적 고찰: 유아기 대상 경험과 하나님 표상 발달과 관련하여

This study analyzes Grotstein's Dual-track Theory, which applied the perspective of development theory and Neurophysiology based on the object-relations theory that emphasizes the importance of early childhood ego-development, to understand why the key factor in self-cohesion in the infant self-development process is “good enough care,” and based on this understanding, I suggest applications in Christian counseling by linking the effect of early childhood psychological experiences on the formation process of God's representation. I critically reconstructed Grotstein's dual-track theory to analyze why “good enough care” has a key impact on infants' self-development in early childhood. Finally, the limitations of the study and suggestions for subsequent studies were discussed.

Research Supervision as a Spiritual Ministry: A Confluence of Object Relations, Psychodynamics and Grace

Abstract The changes in the pedagogy of research supervision in the university context are now reflected within the practices of theological seminaries and accredited colleges. A neglected analytical framework that could illuminate the supervisory relationship is provided by Winnicott’s Object Relations Theory and Bion and Diamond’s Organizational Psychodynamics, as they interconnect identity, stress and creativity – factors that are germane to the researcher experience. Object Relations also parallels faith development. Given the significant personal investment demanded by research, a crisis of identity for the religious student is simultaneously a crisis of faith. Conversely, a Christian faith experience could sustain the research journey through the appropriation of divine Grace. Some suggestions are provided as to how this could be manifested within the research culture.

On looking into The Ego and the Id 100 years after its publication

ABSTRACT Freud's publication of The Ego and the Id sparked a diverging set of psychoanalytic models - ego psychology, structural conflict theory, Kleinianism, object relations theories, Lacanianism, etc. - each of which attempted to deal with the clinical limitations of his first topography in regard to unconscious guilt, negative therapeutic reactions and primitive character organizations. This paper attempts to look back on these developments from the perspective of contemporary, post-Freudian psychoanalytic theories.

Instrument-breast: A psychoanalytic view on musicians’ perception of instruments

ABSTRACT Playing music can be a form of symbolization and helpful in processing emotions. Research shows that therapists use music in clinical settings both as music therapy and as an adjunct therapy to talk therapy. However, unlike other forms of art, music is an objectless form of art, which makes it strikingly similar to inner subjective experiences. This means that the role musical instruments play to connect the two objectless sides is important but is difficult to define causation between the two. The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative research was to understand the role of the musical instrument and the role it plays as the transitional object for adults; the instrument was used as the breast object, in line with Klein’s Object Relations Theory. There were 20 interviews with musicians of different ages, instruments, and skill levels to understand the experiences alongside the breast object. The results from the research reveal that participants anthropomorphized their musical instruments and subjectively perceived them as possessing parental attributes and the ones associated with romantic partners. The result can help inform therapists working with patients who have some musical skills to instill an endopsychic structure and repair the impacts of insecure attachment styles.

Transference-Focused Psychotherapy and Trust Processing in BPD: Exploring Possible Mechanisms of Change.

Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) struggle to identify whom they can safely trust, and this struggle contributes to profound emotional turmoil in their close relationships. Transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP) is an application of object relations theory (ORT) that posits that polarized mental representations of self and other define the personality organization of BPD. TFP aims to utilize a clear treatment frame coupled with an analysis of the therapeutic relationship (i.e., the transference) to help individuals with BPD integrate their polarized mental representations. Improvement in the capacity to trust others is inherent in the mechanisms of change in TFP. In this article, a social cognitive model of trust processing provides a new lens through which we formulate how TFP may enhance trust processing in BPD. Recent evidence from randomized clinical trials supports the argument that TFP may intervene with BPD in a way that is concordant with uniquely improved trust processing.

On Learning: A general theory of objects and object-relations

On Learning: A general theory of objects and object-relations

Object relations theory and transference analysis

Object relations theory and transference analysis

Stille Fragen: ein psychoanalytischer Blick auf die Identitätssuche in Ernst Weiß’ ‚Marengo‘ (1926)

The aim of the article is to present this short story as a turning point in Weiß’s literary work, as his departure from expressionist influences that ushers in his existential period. The theoretical basis for an analysis of the plot draws from psychoanalytical theories of object relations (e.g. works by Fairbairn, Guntrip, Seinfeld and others), especially in connection with the so-called schizoid personality. It is in the relationality of the disillusioned protagonist that the interpretive key is sought, a key to the departure from the expressionist cult of the individual, replaced in Weiß’s late work by a series of heroes searching for their identity.