Objective Relations Theory

Projective Identification copyright 1996 Hannah Fox, CSW, BCD All rights silent whitethorn non be reproduced with protrude permission of Hannah Fox (emailprotected com) This document stink stinkpot be found at http//www. object- dealings. com This presentation go out explore some(prenominal) concepts and techniques within the Object Relations guess of family therapy which, if understood, provides a manakin for scenting at g aloneuss and families. Before conferenceing nearly this approach to family therapy, I would a uniform(p) to explain what object dealings theory is all roughly.Object Relations speculation was originated in England by a group of British psychoanalysts, including Klein, Balint, Fairburn, Winnicott, and Guntrip. Object relations theory was a break from Freuds drive model, and differs from it as follows Freuds model held that a newborn baby is driven by animal instincts, such as hunger, thirst, and plea surely, barely gitnot relate to otherwises. Relationships with others only develop later in the rush of satisfying those needs. In this sense, Freuds model considers relationships to be secondary.In contrast, object relations theory maintains that the baby can relate to others at a very primal age and that relationships with others atomic number 18, therefore, primary. The drive to attach virtuosoself to an object is considered to be the major make force. Since we are public lecture active object relations theory, this is a peachy time to ask what an object is. In object relations theory, the record book object is used with a very specific smasheding. Its not literally a physical per countersign, scarce an internal mental structure that is organize throughout aboriginal development.This mental structure is built through a series of experiences with significant others through a psychic figure out called introjection. Because an babes soonest experiences are usually with its stupefy, she is usually the first int ernal object organize by the infant. Eventually, the father and other significant people as well wrench internalized objects. Introjection, the process of creating internal mental objects, leads to another process called splitting. Splitting occurs because the infant cannot tolerate certain feelings such as pettishness and longing, which occur in all normal development.As a result, the infant has to split take split of itself and repress them. What happens to those keep down split- transfer move? They are dealt with through another grievous process, called projective identification. 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 report and work with children. According to Klein, projective identification consists of splitting dispatch parts of the self, communicate them into another person, and thence identifying with them i n the other person.For example, the earliest relationship the infant has with its return is feeding and touching, but the mother is not always open-bodied 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 suasion of as other parts of the self (ego). When such splitting takes place, the infant is free of the rage but has placed that part of itself complicated down the mother.To make itself whole once again it must identify with the mother. The mother may or may not allow herself to become the cntainer for the infants negative feelings. Even if she doesnt, the projective identification thus far occurs. The preceding(prenominal) process begins in the first half year of life, know as the paranoid-schizoid position. It is characterized by an ability to agnise near(a) feeling s from severely, but an inability to distinguish the mother from the self. Depending on how consistent the mothering is, the infant may or may not progress to a higher level of development known as the depressive position.In the depressive position, which starts at about eight months of age, the child takes backrest its lousy feelings from the mother and separates from her. The mother is now assistn as a separate object, with two good and bad feelings of her own. The infant is aware(p) of its own good and bad feelings. For a child to reach this level of development, the earlier mothering must be consistent. The mother must bring forth accepted most of the childs projected 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 continues two inside and ou tside the child. It remains in the paranoid-schizoid position or, at best, a unassured form of the depressive position. This type of development is associated with b dedicateline personalities. In the to a higher place infant-mother example, the repressed parts of the self, if unresolved, will remain repressed into adulthood. Those parts will dominate the choice of marital partner and the nature of marital relationships, and by supplement the nature of relationships with children.By the time the couple or family come to therapy the projective identification process has give carely progressed to the point of world obvious to the therapist, and will be overtaken in the members behavior toward each other. This is usually not so in respective(prenominal) therapy because it often takes time to build the transference relationship with the therapist. So what does this regard as for the therapist? What does a therapist subscribe to to know in order to work with a family, using the object relations approach? The therapist needs to be trained in individual developmental heory from infancy to aging and to read 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 life cycle of its own, and as it goes through its series of tasks from beforehand(predicate) nurturing of its new members, to emancipation of its adolescents, to pickings 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 lop off the adaption previously achieved.If any member is unable to adapt to new development, pathology, the like projective identification, becomes a stumbling block to future goodly development. The clinical approach is to develop, with the family, an judgement of the nature and origins of their current interactional difficulties, starting from their experience in the here- and-now of the alterative sessions, and exploring the unconscious intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts that are preventing further salubrious development. Interpretation and sagacity 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. Symptom reduction in individuals is not necessarily a goal here. In fact, 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 safekeeping environmentfor the family a place which is consistent so that eventually the family comes to feel comfortable enough to be themselves in the prese nce 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 possible content of patients manifest statements. 4. An understanding of unconscious processes like transference and countertransference.Given those tools, it is the therapists prank 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 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 sacking to present two cases-one of a couple and one of a family-to show how projective identification works.A male patient of mine with minute dream fell in love with a woman who by and by 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 rather intelligent and obtained a professional 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 professional but quite unambitious. His familys philosophy was that one is lucky to deal a job and pay the bills.His father had held the same low compensable job for twenty years although he, too, had a professional degree. So wherefore did these two people stick to married? Since it was unacceptable for her to be ambitious, the wife needed someone to contain those feelings for her. My patient was the ideal object because, although he had an inner ambition, he had no parental support for these strivings. Therefore, he was predisposed to accept and collude in hi s 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 prosperous her brother. The communicate 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 concur with her mothers philosophy, so Fern spent most of her married life serving them. When the family came to see me, both children were having emotional problems. The son was a heavy user of pot and cocaine.His sister had emotional and learning problems in school. Fern had projected into her son that males were supernumerary and needed to be taken care of. Its not hard to see wherefore the son colluded with his mother. The rewards of judge her projected feelings were too hard to resist, so when he reached adolescenc e he satisfied his excessive dependency needs with drugs. The message Ferns daughter received was that she was immaterial and stupid. wherefore did Fern project these feelings onto her daughter? Fern grew up unable to develop her own career 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 rejected by her mother, the daughter colluded by remaining 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 also similar to the relationship Ferns mother had to F erns brother. Because Fern is treating her children so unalikely, when they grow up they will become 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, greatly 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 slopped 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 maxim just now. T And you changed the dependent and I wondered what you were fe eling. F I dont know. I T Donald owned up to some feelings that he was like his father and that part of what he precept 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 countenance some feelings about that. T Exactly. You seemed to have moved away from what was going on here. John was talking to Donald R She doesnt command us to be like our father. T possibly that was upsetting to you? R He wasnt good to her. D Subconsciously maybe. Its deep 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 neer 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 commemorate a couple of things that I remember having a bloody horn in one night whe n I was pregnant and he went out to work racketball and left me alone. Things like that He was mean to me he had no lenience for me. D Thats one thing, Im not like my father. F Im not saying Im trying 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 a great deal 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, attacked 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 But 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 But 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 supplant myself with anything wi th any kind of substances, but I still am.R What do you mean, you still are? D Im hard on myself, critical 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 strong as it is now. T You werent aware of it then? D I wasnt really in check into of the fact that I control my conceitedness now I choose to set up 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 direction and care, which was what Fern had seen between her own mother and her brother. Be cause Donald was not fully accepted by his mother, especially for those qualities that were like his natural father, 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 subsequently 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 spec ial. Ferns daughter told Fern that she was doing the same thing as her mother and that the daughter felt stupid. Fern responded 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 reclaim her split-off parts, freeing her daughter to continue a healthier development. Her son was able to leave home and become more independent.