Object relations
The theory that people carry internal versions of early relationships, each made of a self-image, an image of the other and a feeling linking them, and that these internal pairs shape what they expect and recreate with others.
What drives it
Explains why people pull others into familiar role pairs (critic and failure, rescuer and victim, neglectful parent and unwanted child) and switch sides within them. Useful for identification because the role you are pulled into tells you about their inner pair.
How it shows
Work
A director who feels constantly criticised manages others with criticism: the same pair with the sides reversed. The employee who sets up a boss to neglect them. The leader whose team ends up split into heroes and traitors. Listen to how they describe others and themselves; a fixed cast of characters suggests a strong internal template.
Relationships
Recurring role pairs in a couple: one controls and the other submits, then they swap. A partner sees you through a lens you cannot dislodge. Children are cast in a parent's internal story.
Self
Notice the role you most often end up in with others, and the role you most often cast them in. Watch for moments when you treat someone exactly as you were once treated.
What tells it apart
Attachment theory: Attachment theory centres on security and closeness and is measured by behaviour and interviews; object relations centres on the content of internal role pairs, including aggression and envy. Attachment tells you how close someone lets you get; object relations tells you what part they will cast you in.
Internal working model: The internal working model is a general set of expectations about care; object relations describes several, often contradictory, internal pairs active in the same person, which is why someone can treat you as saviour on Monday and persecutor on Friday.
A test
Notice what role you are being pulled into with this person and whether others report the same role; then look for that role pair in their history.
Questions to carry
- Around this person, which role do others get pulled into, and where else has that pair appeared?
- Which pair of roles do I keep ending up in, and when do I switch sides?
How strong the research is
clinical. Clinical theory; its central claim, that early relationships form templates used in later ones, converges with attachment research, which is strongly supported.
Where it comes from
Melanie Klein, 1930s; W. R. D. Fairbairn, 1940s; Donald Winnicott; Otto Kernberg, 1970s
On the family tree: Melanie Klein
Sources
- D.W. Winnicott, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment (1965)
- Stephen A. Mitchell, Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis: An Integration (1988)