Object relations theories. Types and levels of relationships

Although there were disagreements between representatives of classical psychoanalysis almost from the very beginning, which often led to Freud's followers proposing new (and, it must be said, very productive) ideas and approaches, object relations theory became the first truly alternative school of psychoanalysis.

Its creator, Melanie Klein (née Reitzess), was born in Vienna in 1882, studied art history at the University of Vienna and, due to her own psychological difficulties, underwent personal analysis with such luminaries of psychoanalysis as Karl Abraham and Sandor Ferenczi. Having become interested in psychoanalytic teaching, Melanie Klein became familiar with S. Freud’s 1919 work “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” which largely predetermined the essence of her theory.

Melanie Klein devoted herself to a deep study of the problem of early child development, about which classical psychoanalysis before her had made mostly only general conclusions. Thanks to the identification of psychological patterns that form in early childhood, M. Klein was able to approach the solution of problems that her predecessors considered insoluble, namely, the therapy of children and people with psychotic disorders.

Although S. Freud himself conducted a correspondence analysis of the five-year-old boy Hans, as well as an analysis of his own daughter Anna (at that time, the ethical principles of modern psychoanalysis had not yet been developed, which did not allow working with loved ones), it was still believed that children, like psychotic individuals are unable to develop transference, which is the main tool of psychoanalysis. It is also obvious that it is impossible to work with young children using the free association technique, since their speech activity has not yet developed.

Observing young children, M. Klein suggested that with they perceive the very birth the world and ourselves through fantasies, the form and content of which are determined by the characteristics of children's perception. Thus, it is believed that children are not able to perceive the objects around them and themselves holistically from birth; in addition, they are unable to separate the internal from the external. For example, a mother is perceived not as a single object, but as many “maternal objects” - face, eyes, hands, breasts, etc. Moreover, each such partial object can split into “good” and “bad”. If an object gives pleasure, then the infant perceives it as “good.”

If an object becomes a source of displeasure and frustration, then for the baby it is “bad,” hostile, and dangerous. For example, if a child is tormented by hunger and his mother does not feed him, then he, not yet able to distinguish the external from the internal, perceives this situation in such a way that he is attacked by a “bad” breast. If the baby is fed in excess, then for him this is also a “bad”, aggressive, persecuting breast.

When an infant experiences interaction with a “good” object, he develops a feeling of safety, security, trust, and openness to the world around him.

If the “bad” experience of the infant prevails over the “good” one, his aggression increases, which, according to M. Klein, comes from the innate drive towards death, which comes into conflict with the drive to self-preservation.

The baby experiences a constant fear of persecution, a sense of mortal danger, and reacts to “bad” objects that pursue them with their own aggression.

In his fantasy, the baby tries to keep “good” and “bad” objects separate, otherwise the “bad” ones may spoil the “good” ones by mixing with them.

M. Klein herself called this first stage of a child’s development, which lasts the first 3–4 weeks from birth, the “schizoid-paranoid position,” thereby emphasizing that this is not just a passing period of life, but a certain predisposition that becomes a person’s personal quality in life. all his life.

On next position, which M. Klein called “depressive-manic,” the child gradually begins to perceive his mother as an integral object that no longer breaks down into “good” and “bad.” Thus, if the child’s previous experience was predominantly bad, and he tried to destroy the “bad” mother with his aggression, now it turns out that he was simultaneously trying to destroy the nursing, caring “good” mother. Every time, following an outburst of aggression, the child fears that he could destroy his “good” mother too. He begins to feel guilty (depressed) and tries to make amends for it, i.e. to do something that could restore the “good” mother he had “destroyed.”

Otherwise, the child may take advantage of the fantasy of his omnipotence, the ability to completely control, destroy and restore an object (mania). The child may experience feelings of envy and devalue them towards the “good” aspects of the mother, her ability to provide milk, love and care. If the child experiences this stage of his development relatively calmly, then he develops the ability to experience reciprocity, gratitude, and the ability to accept and provide help.

M. Klein also developed A New Look on the formation of a super-ego in a child, which takes different paths in boys and girls, since a boy, in his attraction to his mother, always competes only with his father, while a girl is forced to compete with her primary love object - her mother - for the sake of her new love- father. M. Klein also introduced a new concept into psychoanalytic use - a specific defense mechanism, which she called “projective identification”, the essence of which is still being debated to this day, however, in general, it means a situation when a person attributes his own “bad” qualities to another and himself for this he begins to be hostile towards him.

The technique of psychoanalytic work with children according to M. Klein is based on the interpretation of the game, which reflects the child’s relationship with objects that are significant to him. By discussing the plot of the game with the child, the analyst streamlines the child’s drives, makes them more manageable for the child, thereby reducing his anxiety and aggression.

Adult psychoanalysis according to M. Klein is distinguished by an active interpretation of the client’s fantasies and drives that unfold in the transference, as a rule, bypassing the interpretation of defense mechanisms.

The term "object" is used in connection with the concept of drive. An object (an object, a person as a whole, a partial person, a fantasy) serves to satisfy a need and relieve the tension caused by it. In Freud, this term first appears in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and is used to interpret sexual desires.
The concept of “object relation” is also found in Freud, but while developing the psychology of the individual organism, he still does not pay special attention to human relationships, understanding them only from the position of the subject himself. An object relationship means interdependence, i.e. the influence of the subject on objects and the reverse influence of objects on the personality. The problem of the object and object relations is the subject of study by many psychoanalysts. We will consider the views of M. Klein, H. Kohut and M. Balint.

English school of object relations. M. Klein

Melanie Klein (1882-1960) attaches great importance to the pre-oedipal stages of individual development, at which both object relations and elementary defense mechanisms are clearly visible. These conclusions of Klein contradict both classical and more modern views of psychoanalysts on the process of child development.
She discovers that she is already early stages During the development of the child, such manifestations of the ego and superego are observed, which Freud attributed to later stages of development, for example, to the phallic stage. In the 1932 book “Psychoanalysis of Children” and in her later works “Sadness and its relation to manic-depressive states” in 1940, “Notes on some schizoid mechanisms” in 1946, she showed that from birth The child reveals two opposing instincts - the attraction to life and the attraction to death. The death drive is perceived by the infant as persecution, so in order to cope with this fear, he defends himself with the help of primitive defense mechanisms. Does this mean that the baby has an elementary sense of his own Self from birth? M. Klein answers this question in the affirmative. She says that to cope with their own fears, the child uses two mechanisms - projection and introjection. The first allows you to take out everything unpleasant, and the second allows you to absorb everything pleasant into yourself. The projection of negative experience, as well as the introjection of positive experience, occurs with the help of objects, which for the child is the mother's breast. To carry out these operations, the child splits a partial object - the mother's breast - into "good" - nourishing, receiving and "bad" - attacking, absorbing. The projection of the death drive occurs due to the projection of one’s aggressive impulses onto a “bad” object. The internalization of a “good” object contributes to the formation and development of the self. “Through the introjection of the good breast, the child not only feels comfortable and happy, but also begins to accumulate positive objects in the self, thanks to which he becomes stronger and more able to cope with the demands that are placed on him both from the inside and from the outside. Thanks to the projection of negative qualities onto the chest, the child feels more free, and this helps him maintain his inner sense of security" (Risenberg R. The Work of Melanie Klein // Encyclopedia of Depth Psychology. Vol. 3. M.: Cogito -Center, 2002 P.94). All these processes are observed in the first months of a child’s life, which belong to the paranoid-schizoid stage of development. Klein emphasizes that designating stages using terms borrowed from psychiatry only indicates the nature of attitudes, fears and defense mechanisms during this period and has no relation to pathology.

Later (at the depressive stage), the child, under the influence of positive impressions, learns that the good and bad breasts refer to the same object. From this moment on, he begins to integrate the entire object as both good and bad. Working through the feeling of fear at a previous stage of development (before 4 months of age) allows the child to cope with his anxiety without resorting to splitting. The perception of a partial object is replaced by the perception of a complete object - the mother. Then the child begins to take other people into account, especially his father, and this lays the foundation for the Oedipus complex.
At first, parents are perceived as a single whole, somehow combining in the child’s ideas. In the process of differentiation of mother and father figures, the child begins to develop feelings of jealousy, envy and autonomy. The predominance of positive experiences in the child’s experience leads to the fact that he works through his fears that arose at the Oedipal stage, resorting not to defenses, but to a realistic assessment of reality and satisfaction.
In addition to the research of Melanie Klein, the English school of object relations includes the work of S. Isaacs, J. Riviere and P. Heimann.

The problem of the basic defect in the works of M. Balint

Mikael Balint was interested in the extent to which it was possible to work with people who had more significant problems than the difficulties of the Oedipal stage of development. To solve this issue, he proposes to distinguish several mental levels: the sphere of the Oedipal conflict, the sphere of the basic defect and the sphere of creation.
Features of the Oedipal level are the presence of a tripartite relationship between the Self and two other objects, as well as the possibility of a conflict between them. Psychotherapeutic work with such clients is built on general principles using “conventional, common language, or the language of adults.”
The second level is called the basic defect level. Balint specifically emphasizes that this is not about a conflict, position or complex, but about a defect. Features of this level are the presence of dyadic relationships, as well as the detection of a defect that resembles “a flaw, some kind of disturbance in the mental apparatus, a deficiency that must be replenished” (M. Balint, 2002, p. 36). The language of adults (interpretations) turns out to be unacceptable for communicating with clients who have a basic defect. Special techniques used by the analyst (in particular non-verbal communication) make it possible to create conditions for the client under which he can use the analyst as a primary object, trust him, get to know himself through another person, through the “healing power of object relations.”

Analysis of the self in the works of H. Kohut

The normal mental development of a child is built on favorable relationships with his immediate environment. Introjection of parental images allows the child to feel his perfection, greatness, and worth.

Traumatic deficiencies in self-objects and lack of empathy can lead to serious personality disorders, such as people with a narcissistic character type. These are clients who could not easily be described in terms of drive theory, or ego psychology (due to the inflexibility of psychological defenses), or object relations theory (the activation of internal objects from which the patient was inadequately separated).

Instead of being overwhelmed by primitive introjections, they complained of emptiness - the absence of internal objects rather than being covered by them. These people lacked internal motivation, guiding values ​​and meaning in life. Such patients were classified as narcissistic individuals, people with internal doubts about their own worth and unstable self-esteem. According to the analyst's impressions, they were distinguished by indifference, boredom, vague irritation, devaluation of the therapist, underestimation or overestimation.
H. Kohut formulated a new theory of the self, explaining possible disorders and developmental features as a consequence of growing up without objects. The approach to personality analysis has changed. Its central element becomes “I”, self-images (self-representations), self-esteem. From these positions they began to consider any person (and not just a narcissistic one) and distinguish the desire for self-respect, the presence of a sense of connectedness, continuity. Defense began to be seen not only as a remedy against anxiety caused by ID, Ego, Super-Ego, but also as a way of maintaining a consistent, positive sense of one's own "I".

Object relations theory was further developed in the work of Fairbairn (1952, 1994) and Winnico (1958, 1971). Fairbairn clearly breaks with the biological approach, based primarily on relationships rather than drives: “the object of my affection may turn my complexion from white to rose-red (as the song says) rather than the direction of instinct as defined in biological metapsychology” (quoted in Greenberg, Mitchell, 1983).

Fairbairn criticized Freud's position that the fundamental motivation of life is pleasure, and came to the conclusion that libido is not directed towards the search for pleasure, but towards the search for an object. The basis of motivation is not gratification and the reduction of tension using other people as a means of achieving this goal.The ultimate goal is to connect with other people.

For Fairbairn and other representatives of the British school of psychoanalysis, it is the object and the relationship with it that is the primary motivation of a person.

Thus, the primary motivation is the need to enter into a certain relationship with the object. From birth, a person seeks an object and tunes into a relationship with it. Personality develops and is structured around the internalization of object relations. Therefore, the task of analysis is to study the relationship of the individual with his object. In the process of development, a personality establishes relationships with external objects that are part of its internal structure. Consequently, one of the main conditions for understanding personality is the study of the world of its internal object relations. It is necessary to analyze the nature of a person’s relationship with objects and the ways they enter into the structure of his inner world.

Pleasure, according to Fairbairn, arises as a form of connection with other people. When contacting parents, the child enjoys the connection and interaction with them. He seeks, first of all, the establishment and repetition of such a connection, which determines the receipt of pleasure. What happens in that case if the parents do not establish a relationship with the child that gives him pleasure, if contact with the parents is painful for the child? From the point of view of the principle of seeking pleasure, the child in such a situation will avoid contact with the parents and try to find other objects that may be more promising in in this regard.

However, in reality everything happens differently. While working with children who were abused by their parents, Fairbairn was struck by the loyalty and attachment these children showed to their parents. Children turned out to be dependent on contacts associated with experiences of emotional pain, which continued to influence the nature of their significant relationships with people in adulthood. As adults, they showed a clear attraction to people who resembled their parents in behavior and attitude.

Fairbairn, unlike Klein, focused not on children's fantasies about “good” and “bad” internalized objects, but on the adequate or inappropriate behavior of parents towards the child. Adequate fulfillment of the parental function ensures that the child develops the ability to contact people, exchange information, and gain experience. Inadequate “parenting” (parenting) leads to the development of alienation in the child, avoidance of communication and the formation, as compensation, of a fantasy world in which internalized internal objects replace real people and real situations. Psychologically inaccessible parents are internalized by the child, and fantastic content arises on the theme of these parents who have become part of the child’s psyche.

Classic psychoanalysis in the theory of motivation is based on the concept of drive and the principle of pleasure. According to this hedonic theory, people seek pleasure and avoid pain. This basic position of classical psychoanalysis raises a certain objection due to the fact that clinical observations indicate obsessive repetition of actions, during which a person repeats some actions associated with unpleasant experiences, for example, with various painful emotional states. It remains unclear why people often consciously and/or unconsciously make themselves unhappy if each of them seeks pleasure and avoids pain? Fairbairn answers this question using the concept of libido adhesiveness.

Adhesiveness is contrary to the pleasure principle. The libido painfully clings to some frustrated aspirations, unattainable objects, distorted desires, etc. An example confirming this position is the Oedipal complex. Freud made repeated attempts to solve this problem. The author experienced great difficulty in analyzing nightmares. He viewed dreams as hidden wish fulfillment. But how, then, should we interpret nightmares and sexual masochism if we understand sexuality only as pleasure? How to understand various experiences associated with mental trauma, when traumatic events are constantly recalled in memory at will? Freud tried to find the reason for what was happening in the activation of the autodestructive drive, which could not fully clarify the situation.

IN classical psychoanalysis the baby acts as an individual organism. Those around him are important to him only as objects that can satisfy his needs. Fairbairn, unlike Freud, considers the child only in interaction with the environment. His concept is dominated by the idea that libido is looking for an object for connection. From this point of view, the adhesiveness of libido becomes clear. Libido is adhesive, because in its nature lies not in plasticity, but in stickiness.

The child comes into contact with his parents, using a wide variety of possible options for interaction. These forms of contact become patterns of communication with other people. Connections and connections with other people are very important to him. A child raised in a dysfunctional family experiences a number of negative emotions in object relations. Classical psychoanalysts believe that such a child should avoid pain and try to find objects that would give him more pleasure. In fact, in reality, children seek familiar pain as a form of connection and do not prefer it to any other.

In adulthood, they often associate with people who cause them a lot of trouble. They enter into relationships with these people according to a mechanism whereby the relationship with them is somewhat similar to the early object relationships with parents. They strive to repeat these relationships, although they are not very pleasant for them.

For example, a patient who was raised by a depressed mother chooses acquaintances in adult life who bear the imprint of melancholy, sadness, sadness and depression. She feels comfortable only in relationships with people who have a low mood background. She views other people as artificial, insincere, and just plain bad.

As a result of analyzing such family scenarios, the question arises: “Why are certain behavioral approaches repeated, although in theory a sad experience should teach these people that this should not be done?” There is an understanding of the need to break out of the “vicious circle,” but no real action. The reason for such rigidity is the actualization of the mechanism of adhesion to family scenario. Children look for an unfavorable painful situation as preferable to other forms of communication, since they are already fixed on it. And in adult life they repeat these behavior patterns to one degree or another. People are so attached to the first connections of childhood that they build their future lives on interactions that resemble those that took place in early childhood.

Object relations are divided into two types. One is real, real object relations that are internalized; the second is fantasy. Some relationships are invented and are also present in the unconscious. They are based on contacts with the environment and have different contents. Contents can undergo mental transformation. For example, bad object relations are internalized, which as a result of fantasy are transformed into good ones. The mechanism and reasons for this transformation are not yet clear. The reason may not be only adhesiveness. The point is that the child internalizes the bad object relation and suppresses it. At the same time, he has a reaction to this bad attitude in the form of a fantasy. He catches individual grains of good relationships from bad relationships, exaggerates them, creates a fantastic world of relationships in himself and begins to attribute good qualities to the bad object. This process is a guide to action for him. Having encountered bad object relationships in later life, he reproduces fantasies that were of an opposite nature in content.

In this process, splitting of the ego can objectively occur. Fairbairn attaches great importance to the phenomenon of “ego splitting” he observed in children. The phenomenon is the result of the negative influence on the child of narcissistically oriented, depressed, emotionally distant parents. The child’s self-object relations in such situations are formed in such a way that he absorbs and introjects the traits of his parents. This happens unconsciously in order to maintain contact with parents. For example, a child absorbs the parents’ depression, becoming depressed, and in this state is on the same emotional wavelength with them, which would be impossible if he were in a different state: playful, cheerful, etc.

According to Fairbairn, the child becomes similar to one or another parental characteristics, internalizing them. As a result, a splitting of the ego occurs. One part of it remains connected with the real world and interacts with it, the other functions in connection with the internalized characteristics of the parents. In a certain sense, this - the second part of the ego, from our point of view, performs a role function, being, in fact, a reactive formation that arose in connection with the need to “fit into” the system of relations with parents by simulating their emotional state.

Fairbairn comes to the conclusion that the splitting of the ego is not limited to this: the second part of the ego, which has internalized the properties of the parents, is also split.

The presence of a sector that reflects the bad qualities of the object sometimes leads to the fact that the child’s attempts to overcome this negative part in himself lead to a loss of connection with the parents with whom he is identified. If the child begins to feel happier, he may have a feeling of anxiety associated with the fact that he is distancing himself from the parent part, moving away from it because the child's absorption of the pathological character traits of the object through its internalization allows him to feel a connection with the parents. He doesn't know how to think or behave differently. A different course of events is possible only in fantasies. Internalization creates a split in the ego. Thus, one part of the Self is directed at really existing parents, and the other at illusory parents, whose images are created in the child’s imagination.

The split occurs between the frustrating, directly upsetting, disappointing parts of the internalized parent, which Fairbairn calls the “rejecting object,” and the seductive, promising parts, defined as the “exciting object.” The child’s emotional hunger is outlined by an exciting object, while the inevitable distancing is outlined by a discarding object.

The internalized parental relationship contains a positive exciting object and a frustrating disappointing object. One part of the Self is associated with pleasant, exciting, fantastic feelings, and the other with opposite content.

The part of the ego that is associated with hope and aspirations Fairbairn called the libidinal ego, and the part associated with bad qualities - the anti-libidinal ego. The libidinal ego experiences a longing for love, a feeling of hope; antilibidinal - feelings of hatred, anger, rage, hostility. The anti-libidinal ego can be hostile to the libidinal ego. This is the mechanism ambivalent feelings, which can worsen under pathological conditions. Some pathological conditions are characterized by the fact that in relation to the same object or phenomenon, a person develops simultaneously feelings of love and hatred. The reason for this lies in children's Self-object relationships and the splitting of the ego that occurs in such cases.

Unfortunately, suppression and internalization do not free a person from bad relationships. Remaining invisible, they are present in the unconscious. In an unconscious attempt to free himself from these object relations, a person projects them onto the external world. Fairbairn, following Klein, calls this process “projective identification.” Someone is assigned the role of a rejecting mother, someone - an unattainable father, a criticizing relative, a humiliating older brother, etc. “First they were internalized and repressed, and then - unconsciously, to be sure - projected again into the outside world” ( Jones, 1991:15).

Projective identification does not necessarily concern parents. It also happens in relationships with other people. Some of them may cause antipathy due to the fact that something associated with bad objects is projected onto them. A person may in some way resemble an internalized image, although in reality he is not what he resembles. We are talking about some character trait, some personal characteristic, etc. The subject carrying out projective identification is captured by this process, he is “carried” and he no longer controls the situation. He sees someone else as someone else, develops thoughts and fantasies about him, which leads to the development of a completely inadequate assessment of him, which is weighed down by what was once there, but in the wrong place and with the wrong person.

It is important to keep in mind that in this process it is not just the bad object that is recreated, but the emotional coloring of the relationship with it. A person who performs projective identification may find himself in a situation of struggling with a distant object of the past, although good objects can also be projected.

Thus, one should carefully analyze the internal content of transfers that occur in life. The goal of the analytic process is not to discharge libido and aggression (Freud), but to recreate a repetition of object relations in which bad objects are projected onto the analyst. It is important that this process reaches the level of awareness and does not remain in the unconscious. Projective identification is an important point in the transference. In the process of contact with the analyst, the patient transfers to him a certain image or part of an image from his past. He makes an attempt to “unload” from bad objects. The patient sees in the analyst a large number of(“assembly”) of bad object relations. The content of the internal world, in which bad objects were internalized and suppressed, is released and played out again during projective identification, but in the external world, at a new level, at a different time and on a different intellectual, mnestic, etc. background.

Sometimes patients are very attached to the “contents” of their psyche and feel the need for repetitions associated with a kind of nostalgia. Without awareness, this process can be violent and uncontrollable. Sometimes replaying leads to a break in relationships because negative material is projected, and further interpersonal contact with the transfer object is impossible.

The difference in the interpretation of transference between classical and modern psychoanalysis is that in the first case, transference is interpreted as a projection of repressed drives, and in the second, as bad objects being replayed.

Within the framework of object relations theory, Fairbairn explored the phenomenon of repression. According to the author, it is not desires, memories or impulses that are repressed, first of all, but relationships, such connections with parents that are not integrated into another system of connections. Memories, desires, etc. are repressed not primarily due to their traumatic or forbidden content, but because they are a component of dangerous or humiliating object relations.

Fairbairn (1943:64) writes: “it is impossible for anyone to pass through childhood without having bad objects which are internalized and repressed”, “psychopathology may be said to be concerned largely with the study of the relationship of the ego with the objects it has internalized” (Fairbairn , 1993). But even in a depressed state, these objects do not cease to exert their influence. Consequently, knowledge of human psychology requires an analysis of object relations, and the study of psychopathology is impossible without identifying the relationship of the ego with its internalized objects.

What is primarily repressed is “not intolerable guilt impulses or intolerable unpleasant memories, but intolerable bad internalized objects” (Fairbairn, 1943). In this regard, it should be clarified that we are not talking about static objects, but about object relations.

By bad objects we mean mental materials in the formation of which parents or those who took care of the child in the early period of his life took part. They include internalized fragments of some emotions and actions of people who treated the child badly, neglected him, rejected and persecuted him, showed unnecessary behavior. this moment help and reactions that are unpleasant for the child. Being internalized, they do not lose their painful and unpleasant qualities. There is not only internalization, but also repression of these materials. Therefore, object relations are the key to a new understanding of repression and personality motivation, since what is primarily repressed is not guilt impulses and intolerable, unpleasant memories, but intolerably bad internalized objects.

Fairbairn, unlike Freud, believed that repression is the result of broken object relations, and not broken relationships are the result of repression. It follows that the problem in analytical therapy is not limited to “removing” repression in order to realize the repressed material. Bad object relations must be replaced by new, more favorable ones.Creating such relationships in the process of working with the analyst is the goal of psychoanalysis.

The process of internalization is considered by Fairbairn to be a primary defense. Because the objects of experience are painful, a person “internalizes them in an attempt to control” (Fairbairn, 1943). However, such control does not always “work.” The defense undertaken can turn into a Trojan horse. Taken internally objects remain with a person for a long time, and perhaps forever, “retaining their power... in the inner world.” They reside in the psyche as “internal saboteurs,” sometimes taking the form of feelings of guilt, anxiety, condemnation, and in others more pathological options can turn into judgmental inner voices.

Sometimes these internalized objects are metaphorically referred to as conflicting, anxious, judgmental, fearful, humiliating, and guilt-inducing inner voices. This fact is of great importance because in conditions of the development of mental illness they come to life in the form of auditory hallucinations, the content of which corresponds to bad objects that are included in the psyche.

The purpose of internalization is to protect against psychological pain. The internalization of bad objects leads to the fact that the psyche of each person contains a core of psychopathology, on the basis of which, under certain conditions, one or another disorder can develop. Obviously this is psychological mechanism formation of pseudohallucinatory and hallucinatory phenomena.

Object relations theory was further developed in the work of Winnicott (1960, 1965, 1971). Based on observations of children and their mothers, first as a pediatrician and then as a psychoanalyst, Winnicott introduced new ideas into psychoanalytic thinking regarding the relationship between child and mother , and subsequently between the patient and the analyst.

Winnicott emphasized filling life with a sense of personal meaning, singling out patients who did not feel like individuals. To characterize such patients, Winnicott used the term “false Self disorder,” characterized by a violation of the very sense of subjectivity and individuality.

In studies of the real and the false. I draw attention to the importance of the quality of subjective experiences. It analyzes how a person feels his inner reality, how much his life is saturated with a sense of personal meaning, what his ideas about himself are, what constitutes his, different from others, creative center of his own experiences, how a clear differentiation of himself is carried out from other people and the world in in general.

Practice shows that there is an increasing number of patients who make complaints not about conflict, not about symptoms, signs of a disorder, feelings of guilt, depression, anxiety, etc. These people are worried about the fact that they do not feel like an individual. Musil (1971) describes such a person in his book The Man Without Qualities. Its hero identifies himself with someone else who plays a role that corresponds to the situation and the expectations of others. Playing someone else's role, he loses himself. We are talking about the formation of a false Self.

Winnicott described disorders associated with the formation of a false Self. He believed that this is a “core” disorder that goes deep inside. It is invisible from the outside. Usually the presence of such a disorder is not even realized, but the person is in a state of chronic psychological discomfort, in which the feeling of emptiness predominates. He is very afraid of loneliness, afraid to be alone with himself, because this state is especially difficult to bear. There is a feeling that something is about to happen. Boredom, emptiness and a feeling of chaos are bothered. Existential anxiety and longing develop get rid of it at any cost.In connection with this, inappropriate actions may be committed.

A person is capable of living in the shell of a false self for a more or less long period of time. Especially if he has enough energy and strength to be constantly involved in any activity. If it is impossible to implement active actions or there is a lack of internal energy to carry them out, a difficult to bear condition arises.

Winnicott correlated the onset of the disorder with the pre-oedipal period, linking its development with a deficiency in the mother-child relationship. Winnicott emphasized that this is not about pronounced emotional deprivation or violence, but about the discrepancy between maternal reactivity and the characteristics of the infant’s experiences, the insufficiency of their reinforcement at the right moments. The reason for the discrepancy between the rhythms of mother and child is the mother’s weak intuitiveness. An intuitive mother relatively quickly senses the child’s desires, responds adequately and spontaneously to them, creating an environment of comfortable “drift” in the flow of unintegrated experiences. He spontaneously appears and disappears all kinds of discrete desires, needs, needs, which are often not satisfied.

At the same time, the author believed that the “false Self” promotes social adaptation and performs a protective (protective) function. A helpless child can count on a “reward” only if he conforms, submits to the demands of the people on whom he depends, primarily his parents. The child is afraid that his sincere self-expression will be punished by deprivation of love and abandonment.

In connection with the above, it should be noted that Winnicott (1963) spoke of the “true Self” as “incognito”; Khan (1963) speaks of the “privacy of the Self,” and Enid Balint (1991) believes that some of the deepest forms of mental experience characteristic of the true Self cannot be “organized in language.” Mitchell (1993) draws attention to the paradox that "when we feel most private, most deeply 'inside,' we are in some sense most deeply connected to others from whom we have learned to become Self." The very ability to be one first develops in the presence of a non-interfering other (Winnicott, 1958).

Disturbances in the Self system leave a subtle imprint on the interactions between mother and baby from the very beginning of his life. Winnicott attached the main importance in these communications not to violence against the child, not to deprivation, but to how the mother reacts to the child, how she copes with his needs, and what is the quality of her emotional reaction to the child. It's not just about eating, but about the emotions of love, about creating an emotional bridge between mother and child.

In cases where the mother does not provide a good enough environment for the child, the consolidation of his healthy Self is disrupted and the psychological development of some important central segment of the psyche is delayed. The remaining segments continue to develop, but the emptiness of the missing core remains inside.

Winnicott saw in the mother's face a kind of mirror in which the child observes the reflection of his own feelings and through this recognition acquires a sense of himself. This process is disrupted if the mother is in the grip of negative emotions, if, for example, she is depressed or depressed, angry, angry. Obviously, this is how Self insufficiency is formed, a violation of identity that underlies borderline personality disorder.

At the same time, Winnicott emphasized that the mother, in the interests of the child, should not always be “perfect,” i.e. always meet his needs, as this will suppress rather than stimulate his formation as an autonomous and independent being. Mothers (Winnicott did not focus on fathers) should be “good enough,” but not “perfect.” Winnicott saw the danger in the fact that parents, under the influence of their own unconscious needs, can impose their will on the child, suppressing the formation of a separate Self.

Winnicott, like Balint, emphasized the importance of empathy. The child perceives information from the outside world at the bodily, protopathic level, at the level of sensations, signals, etc. These are the nuances of emotions that are necessary for the formation of Self. In persons with Self-disorders in adulthood, empathy is usually enhanced. The specialist’s consideration of the patient’s increased empathy is especially important, because this leaves a special imprint on the attitude of these people to psychotherapy. Empathically grasping insincerity, they will pay attention not to the words, but to what lies behind the analyst's words. If they feel a lack of sincere interest in themselves, this will lead to a breakdown in communication and loss of interest in therapy.

Winnicott describes a mother’s over-occupation with a child as a woman’s mental state that allows her to be a good mother and create the environmental situation necessary for the child’s development. This over-busyness requires a woman to renounce many subjective desires and interests and focus on the vital needs of the child. The gap that occurs between the intrauterine and extrauterine periods of a child's life must be mitigated, since its consequences are of great importance for the further development of the child.

Immediately after birth, the child has the necessary subjective feeling of superpower and superpowers. This is a short-term, but necessary period for him. Its meaning is to immediately satisfy the child’s desires. If he is hungry, he receives breastfeeding; if he is cold and uncomfortable, he is covered and warmed. By satisfying his desires, he seems to control the situation and create the environment he needs. The beginning of thinking at will (wanted and immediately received) is laid precisely in this period. As a result of this attitude, the child develops the illusion and belief that his desire creates the object of desire. The mother must understand the need to be near the child when she is needed, and vice versa, to be absent when she is not needed. Winnicott calls this situation a supportive environment - a mental space within which the child feels comfortable, without realizing at the intellectual level that he is protected.

The period of over-occupation with a child should be short-term, otherwise it will lead to negative results. The author defines the mother’s over-busyness as a kind of temporary madness, which makes it possible to suppress her subjectivity in order to become a mediator in the development of the child’s subjective illusory feeling. In an optimal situation, the mother gradually moves away from this activity and stops it, since it should not be long-lasting. The mother should show increased interest in her own comfort, her problems, her personality, thereby reducing over-busyness to nothing. She makes first one, then another and subsequent pauses in satisfying the desires of the child, who gradually gets rid of the illusion of obligatory satisfaction of his desires. In this way he escapes from the illusory feeling of subjective omnipotence.

The child's parting with illusions helps him gradually realize that the world does not consist of subjectivity alone, and that satisfying a desire requires not only the expression of this desire, but also interaction with other people who have own desires and needs. Thus, to the experience of subjective omnipotence is added the experience of objective reality, which does not replace the first, but rather exists alongside it or in some relation to it.

Winnicott does not view this development as a linear sequence in which one stage replaces another that preceded it. They are layered on top of each other and combined with each other. A person who lives only in objective external reality expresses his false Self without a subjective center. He is submissive, because... completely focused on the expectations of others as stimuli coming from the external environment.

In order to be a person with a constantly developing Self and a sense of personal meaning, a periodic experience of subjective omnipotence is necessary. We are talking about a deeply personal, never fully revealed core of experience. The temporary experience of subjective omnipotence is provided to the infant by the mother by maintaining a constant value resource that must be preserved to some extent. The child's early experiences allow him, as he grows, to continue to feel his spontaneously arising desires as something very important and meaningful. Although already during this period the child must integrate various types of interaction with other people.

Between these two forms of experience (illusory omnipotence and objective reality) there is a third form, which Winnicott calls the transitional experience.

Winnicott uses the concept of “transitional phenomena” that appear during the child’s experience of contact with his mother. Initially, the child fixates on the mother's body, and, above all, on her chest. Subsequently, fixation occurs on “transitional objects.”

With subjective omnipotence, the child feels that he creates a desired object, for example, the mother's breast, and believes that he has complete control over this object. When experiencing objective reality, the child feels that he must find the desired object. He realizes his separation from it and understands that he does not control this object.

A transitional object is perceived differently. It is experienced not as subjectively created and controlled, and not as separate, found and discovered, but as something intermediate between the first and second. Thus, the status of a transitional object is, by its definition, dual and paradoxical. It is important that parents do not destroy the duality of the transitional object.

Transitional objects include clothes, toys, blankets and other objects that are to some extent associated with the experience of certain maternal qualities and take on new meaning during periods of temporary absence of the mother.

A transitional object, such as a toy, acts as a substitute for parents or mother. It has a symbolic meaning, making the transition from symbiotic mixing, from dependence on the mother to the processes of separation from her. The toy is perceived by the child as an object onto which fantasies can be projected, associated, for example, with the mother during her absence. The presence of such an object allows the child to get used to the absence of a person caring for him for increasingly longer periods of time.

What is important is not the child’s transition from dependence to independence, but the creation of a bridge between two different types of experiences, two positions of Self in relation to others.

The importance of a toy is not that it replaces the child’s mother, but that it ensures the expansion of the boundaries of his self, halfway between dependence on the mother and independence. The child creates this continuation with a subjective feeling of omnipotence. At the same time, the object functions independently. The significance of transitional objects is to support the child, whom life moves from the world of illusory omnipotence to a world where he must adapt and cooperate with others.

Transitional objects soften the transition from dependence on the mother to relative independence. They are “transitional” in the sense that they are between the ideal object of fantasy and the real object of external reality. Winnicott classified the ability to play as a transitional phenomenon, which Meissner (1984:170) defined as “the ability to mix illusion and reality.” The ability to play is “an exercise in creativity” (Meissner, 1984). It uses symbols and therefore produces art, literature, painting, culture.

Transitional experiences are important for maintaining mental health and creativity. They become a special zone of protection for the creative self, within which it operates and plays out various situations. A person who lives in a state of subjective omnipotence and has no bridge to objective reality is self-absorbed, autistic, and isolated.

An example is schizotypal personality disorder, whose carriers are characterized by isolation, strangeness, unusualness, and inability to adapt to the environment.

If a person lives only in objective reality and does not have roots in the early infantile feeling of subjective omnipotence, he is adapted and adapted to the environment very superficially. He lacks originality, passion, the ability to forget himself, etc.

The duality of the transition zone, on the one hand, allows one to preserve the root initial experiences as a deep and spontaneous source of oneself, and, on the other hand, to adequately interact with the outside world, understand and take into account the presence of other points of view, views and value orientations.

Exploring the place that aggression occupies in the transition between subjective omnipotence and objective reality, Winnicott proposed the concept of “object use.” With subjective omnipotence, the child uses the object “mercilessly.” He creates it with his desire, exploits it for his own pleasure and can destroy it. Such an experience requires complete submission and exploitation of the nearby mother. Gradually, the child begins to realize that there is another person nearby who can be destroyed. It is a cyclical process of almighty creativity, destruction and survival.

With the advent of a sense of the outside world and a sense of another person who has his own rights, the child begins to understand that people exist outside of his omnipotent control. There is an awareness that his desires can be dangerous.

The transitional object is endowed with emotions characteristic of a living person and allows you to act out various situations on it. This object is called transitional because after some time its relevance is lost. It can be replaced by another transitional object, a group of objects, or this stage of experience becomes a thing of the past. A repeated meeting of an adult with an old transitional object, which he accidentally “finds somewhere in a chest,” can cause short-term nostalgic feelings in him, a surge of emotions and experiences. Children deprived of emotional support from their parents often find a way out by fixating their feelings on a transitional object. Excessive fixation on an object leads to the predominance of an illusory feeling of subjective omnipotence. A large number of fantastic events of various contents appear around such an object, which reflect thinking at will. Such a child turns out to be poorly adapted to future life.

In order to understand the essence of fantastic contents, focusing only on the approaches of classical psychoanalysis is not enough, since these contents are subject to collective and deeply unconscious algorithms. Algorithms are represented by matrices, preforms, and archetypes, which are built according to certain patterns. This is how myths, legends and epics replace reality, which is facilitated by environmental influences, including those that do not have a direct connection with parents. These can be fairy tales, excerpts of some events read or seen in films that help the child create various plots that protect him from the unsightly real environment of the world around him.

Myths are created about the Savior, the Hero, who solve his problems for the child. The memory of every person stores the contents of favorite plots created in childhood and further developed in adulthood. Such plots have a serious impact on life. There are people who have the second link of the transitional object - objective reality is not sufficiently represented. This is accompanied by the emergence of a position of expectation, which reflects the first link of the transitional object - subjective omnipotence. On this basis, contacts with people begin to be built, the further development of which is doomed to failure, since a fairy-tale image is projected onto people, to which a real person does not correspond. Disappointment arises, mental trauma appears.

Winnicott believes that the false Self develops as a result of a premature, violent need to enter into contact with the outside world. The creation of a false Self is necessary. Particular importance in this process is given to the relationship and coexistence of the false Self with the real one. If the false Self absorbs the real Self, loss of self occurs. A person can lose himself at different stages of life, but the prerequisites for possible loss are laid at an early age. Many educational systems are often aimed at ensuring that the child becomes more and more convergent as he develops, using less and less of his own resources, discarding everything that goes beyond given limits. A child is characterized by playful imagination, vivid perception, empathy, curiosity, and interest.

An education system that cuts off a number of interests and fixes the child on a narrow focus of interests, reduces them and leads to the convergence of the child. The reason for convergence is the peculiarities of behavior, thoughts and feelings imposed on him. For example, a child is not allowed to express himself emotionally, based on the premise of the need to smooth out and suppress emotional manifestations, the ability to control the expression of emotions and spontaneity in behavior. Interests in certain types of activity are suppressed due to the fact that it is not accepted, does not correspond to the image, prestige, and does not, from the point of view of parents, provide sufficient dividends. In this way, the formation of a false Self is stimulated, and the real Self goes into the shadows. Sometimes children experience a feeling of duality between the false and the real Self, which takes unusual forms. For example, a seven-year-old child alarms his parents by often talking about himself in the third person, expressing his real Self. “He’s thirsty, he’ll sleep,” the boy says about himself, thereby emphasizing that he is his real Self, who really wants exactly this. Other desires come not from him, but from “them”, from other parts of his Self. Thus, the child clearly differentiates his present state from what is imposed on him external environment, in this case parents. This splitting is recorded by parents and causes their alertness.

An interesting feature of people who have not formed a real Self is the fear of silence during contact with other people. Such a person believes that a pause during a conversation causes a negative feeling in the interlocutor. He evaluates silence as a state that brings a person closer to a heightened sense of emptiness. Therefore, he strives to fill the space of silence as much as possible. Far from understanding the importance and productivity of silence, it is difficult for him to grasp the truth that silence can be meaningful and creative.

For a person with a false Self, the assessment of him by others is important, and since he has a fear of a negative assessment, he begins to distract the latter by talking on any topic. This tactic brings certain results, but does not relieve a person from the feeling of dissatisfaction.

From the point of view of Kohut (1971), a person can “get rid” of bad Self-object relations by “introducing” new Self-object relations into his psyche, which will begin to dominate the old system of interactions. KoYD believed that almost all forms of mental disorders are caused by a violation of the Self-object relations of childhood. These childhood relationships were so negatively colored that they cannot be internalized and therefore interfere with the development of a cohesive sense of Self. As a result, the child does not develop the necessary internal structure of the personality, and his psyche remains fixed on archaic Self-objects. The consequence of this is that throughout life the psyche experiences the irrational influence of certain objects and a person cannot free himself from unusual dependence and attachment to them, experiencing nostalgia in their absence. These objects replace part of his mental structures The relationship between them and the psyche leads to the development of various kinds of emotional states that suddenly arise in an adult, the origin of which is unclear to him.

Characterizing people with a weak Self, Kohut draws attention to the underdevelopment of their Self in terms of the cohesion of its structure. People with a weak self lack the meaning of life and the main direction of actions; they actually do not have a developed identity and therefore easily experience various shapes maladjustment to the environment.

Kohut draws attention to the presence in a child of empathic insufficiency - a deficiency of intuition, empathy, which blocks the development of identity. In case of successful work on the further development of empathy, the process of self-development can be restored at any age, but as one gets older, the ability to develop empathy decreases. Kohut believed that this possibility should be used in the process of psychotherapy of patients with various disorders.

Proper psychotherapy gives the development of empathy a second chance, which was missed in childhood. In the process of psychoanalysis, it is necessary to provide the patient with the opportunity to form new Self-object relationships that promote the growth of new mental structures. This process includes techniques aimed at further developing and further improving empathy.

Kohut's position about the weakness of empathy in persons with identity disorders was not confirmed in our observations of patients with borderline personality disorder, who showed heightened empathy towards persons who are emotionally significant to them.

M. Balint (1968), in his proposed concept of “basic deficiency,” also attaches special importance to the early period of child development. The author makes the normal development of a child dependent on maternal-infant “harmonious interpenetrative mixing.” In cases of inadequate parenting (distance, neglect, aggression), the child develops a basic deficiency and the development of identity is disrupted. Balint emphasizes that the main deficiency is formed in the pre-oedipal, non-verbal period of life. This is associated with the difficulties of psychotherapy for such patients, since the latter in classical psychoanalysis is based on verbal communication, and words for a patient with a basic deficiency are devoid of emotional meaning and therefore are not fully perceived by him. For effective influence, not purely interpretive approaches are needed, but informal empathic communication, interpreted by modern experts (Langs, 1996) as unconscious communication.

Therapeutic success can be achieved only if the level of the underlying deficiency is reached.
The psychoanalytic interpretation of mental disorders of the psychotic level is contained in the works of Bion"a (1955, 1965). Wilfred Bion focused on the further development theoretical provisions Melanie Klein in the aspect of applying object relations to schizophrenic manifestations. By analyzing the characteristics of thinking and language in people suffering from schizophrenia, Bion tried to explain the nature and dynamics of the fragmentation and loss of semantic meaning that occurs in them. The author found the functioning of additional associations between schizophrenic splittings, attacks of envy and rage, described by Klein, in relation to the "bad" object - the mother's breast.

In cases of schizophrenic psychopathology, the attack is directed not only at an external object, but also at a part of one’s own psyche associated with the object/objects and reality in general. “The child perceives the connection with the object as extremely painful and therefore attacks not only the breast, but also his own psychic faculties that connect him to the breast” (Mitchell, Black, 1995). This is an attack on perception and thought process. It leads to the destruction of the ability to perceive and understand reality, to establish meaningful contact with other people. As Mitchell and Black put it, envy (in Klein's understanding) becomes a disorder of an "autoimmune" nature, in which the psyche attacks itself.

Bion tried to understand the “methods” that are used to attack the psyche of one’s own mental processes, and came to the conclusion that the focus of the attack is connections. As a result, associations between thoughts, feelings and objects are split.

Bion, following Klein, continued to develop the concept of projective identification. Klein famously defined projective identification as a fantasy in which some part of the Self is experienced as located in another person with whom the Self identifies and tries to control. Bion was interested in the influence of projective identification on the person on whom this identification occurred. In the process of analyzing patients with severe mental disorders Bion found that he experienced unpleasant emotional states that approximated the emotional experiences of his patients. Based on this kind of observation, the author came to the conclusion that the analyst, during the analysis at some of its stages, becomes a “container” of mental content that initially belongs to the patient and is projected onto the analyst.

Bion thus expanded the concept of projective identification into a reciprocal process involving patient and analyst.

The patient's excitement and anxiety, through the mechanism of contagiousness of emotion, cause anxiety in the analyst; the patient's depressive state provokes the analyst's depression. The roots of this phenomenon can be traced back to the earliest periods of life. The baby is “filled” with disturbing sensations that he is not able to somehow organize and control. In this regard, he projects these experiences onto the mother, who reacts to the situation and “in a sense organizes the experiences for the infant, who introjects them in a transferable form.” If the mother is not attuned to the infant's condition, the infant remains preoccupied with disorganized, fragmented, and terrifying experiences. The presence of emotional resonance with the child is obviously necessary for the development of intimacy, empathy, and empathy.

In the analytical situation, according to Bion's ideas, the same model “works.” This same model underlies the understanding of the role of projective identification. Complex interactions occur between the analyst and the patient, due to the dyadic nature of the contact, the personalization of projective identification.

The concept of interpersonal projective identification in relationships that develop during psychoanalytic therapy is presented in Racker's works on transference and countertransference (Racker, 1953, 1968). The author attached great importance to the analyst's identification with the patient's projections, with those segments of the patient's Self that are experienced by the analyst .

Racker (1953) states that “the analyst has two roles:
1) interpreter of unconscious processes;
2) is the object of the same processes.

Consequences: countertransference can intervene and interfere, since the analyst is, firstly, an interpreter and, secondly, an object of impulses... The perception may be correct, but what is perceived can provoke neurotic reactions that damage his interpretive capacity. The analyst in the role of interpreter is able to help or hinder the perception of unconscious processes. The analyst as an object changes his behavior, which in turn affects the patient's perception of him. The form of interpretations, the sound of the voice, non-verbal communication in relation to the patient are perceived by the patient, leading to personal transformation and a change in object relations.

The patient's influence on the analyst may, for example, be expressed in the fact that the analyst believes the patient if the latter attributes various negative characteristics to him, that is, the analyst begins to consider himself “bad” in accordance with the introjected bad objects that the patient has projected onto him. This also happens because the patient’s “ally” turns out to be an internal element of the analyst’s personality—his own bad objects, which he hates in himself.

This mechanism leads to the possible emergence in the analyst of a feeling of hatred towards the patient, which, in turn, activates the analyst’s superego and threatens with corresponding consequences.

Racker (1968) argued against the “myth of the analytic situation” characteristic of classical psychoanalysis, which characterizes analysis as an interaction between a sick and a healthy person.” The author studied object relations in analytical dynamics: “The truth is that it is an integration between two personalities whose ego is under pressure from the id, superego and the external world; each personality has its own internal and external dependencies, anxieties and pathological defenses; everyone is also a child with his inner parents; and each of these integral personalities - the analysand and the analyst - responds to each event of the analytical situation."

– a person’s relationship to the world of people and things around him, based on the perception of real or imaginary objects and possible ways of interacting with them.

Ideas about object relations were contained in some of the works of S. Freud. They did not receive a detailed discussion from him, but nevertheless gave the necessary impetus to the research and therapeutic activities of those psychoanalysts who not only drew attention to the importance of studying object relations, but also tried to create an appropriate theory. In any case, in such works of S. Freud as “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917) and “Mass Psychology and Analysis of the Human Self” (1921), one can find the reflections of the founder of psychoanalysis about a person’s relationship to certain sexual and love objects.

Thus, in his work “Mass Psychology and Analysis of the Human Self,” he wrote about identification as the earliest manifestation of a boy’s psychological connection with another person: with his mother - purely sexual capture by an object, with his father - identification based on the type of assimilation. At the same time, S. Freud noted the difference between identification with the father and the “objective election of the father.” In the first case, the father is what a person wants to be, in the second, what he wants to have. In neurotic symptom formation, identification may have a more complex situation, as is observed, for example, in the case when a little girl experiences the same symptom of illness as her mother, say, a painful cough. In this case, identification means either a hostile desire to take the place of the mother, and the symptom expresses object love for the father (he realizes the replacement of the mother under the influence of feelings of guilt), or the symptom is equal to the symptom of a loved one, when “identification has taken the place of object choice, object choice has regressed to identification "

As the theory and practice of psychoanalysis developed, interest in the study of object relations began to increase among some psychoanalysts. If S. Freud focused on the object as a source of human sexual satisfaction, then psychoanalysts M. Balint, D. Winnicott, M. Klein, M. Mahler, W. Fairbairn and others shifted research interest to the plane of studying how in the process of child development relationships are formed that influence not only the child’s perception of external objects, but also the organization of his life depending on these objects. The search for an object, its perception, real and fantastic ideas about it, the creation of a holistic image of the object, its inclusion in the history of the individual’s development, correlation with mental functions, reactions and human defense mechanisms - all this is the subject of understanding by psychoanalysts who approach the study of mental illness and treatment of patients from the perspective of object relations.

Z. Freud proceeded from the fact that at the oral and anal stages of a child’s psychosexual development, a splitting of drives takes place, when, in fact, the child does not perceive either other people or himself as an integral object, which becomes significant for him as such only at the oedipal-phallic phase of development, when in the process of mental mastery of an external object an internal holistic image of it is formed. Subsequent psychoanalysts carried out a more detailed analysis of the formation of object relations at the pre-Oedipal stages of child development.

M. Klein (1882–1960) suggested that during the first months of a child’s life, he begins to perceive the mother’s breast as a “good” or “bad” object. Due to the lack of integration of his psyche, the child feels a strong contrast between the “good” and “bad” breasts, and his perception of this object is accompanied by a split attitude towards it. At the same time, as M. Klein believed, already during the first three to four months of a child’s life, the “good” and “bad” object are not completely separated from each other in his psyche: in its “good” and “bad” quality, the mother’s breast the child merges with her bodily presence; In the early stages of its development, a certain attitude of the child towards the mother as the first object develops. Thanks to the processes of projection and introjection, this object external to the child is transferred to the internal plane. The external and internal “good” breast “becomes the prototype of all useful and satisfying objects,” while the “bad” breast “becomes the prototype of all external and internal pursuing objects.”

In the early stages of its development, the baby perceives the mother's breast as a partial object. As soon as the infant directs his interest to objects other than the mother's breast, a process takes place that is extremely important for expanding the scope of object relations. But only over time does the child become capable of not partial, but holistic perception of objects. Paying attention to this circumstance, some psychoanalysts have focused their attention on considering the transitional stage from a partial to a holistic object.

W. Fairbairn (1890–1964) put forward the statement that a person’s sexual attraction does not strive for pleasure, but for an object; it is an impulse aimed at finding another person. The development of an individual depends on the human object, on his relationship with it, within the framework of which there is a transition from immature to more mature object relations. In this regard, sexual attraction acts as a special technique for establishing object relations.

D. Winnicott (1896–1971) introduced the concept of “transitional object” into psychoanalytic literature. He proceeded from the fact that children aged from four months to one year can show a special attachment to individual objects, be it part of their clothes, blankets, which they happily suck on, grab with their hands, and press to themselves. The attitude towards such transitional objects constitutes an intermediate area of ​​the child’s experience, which is capable of maintaining its significance for him for a long time. From the point of view of D. Winnicott, the transitional object is a necessary part childhood experience, allowing the child to make the transition from an oral relationship to the first object (the mother’s breast and herself), to such object relationships that indicate the establishment of real relationships between the internal and external world of a person. Along with this, he came up with the idea according to which the formation of the individual’s psyche occurs under the sign of the significant influence of an object, considered as both an internal and an external object.

According to M. Mahler (1897–1985), at the age of two years, a child begins to show stability and constancy in his emotional attitude towards an object. The external object is perceived by him not in its divisions as “good” and “bad”, but in its integrity. In the absence of this object, the child retains an internal image of it, which contributes not only to the establishment of a close connection between a real, imaginary object and mental mastery of it, but also to the idealization of the object. The establishment of permanent object relations indicates the formation of a stable mental structure of the individual. At the same time, the formation of object relations can occur under the sign of separation-individuation. In general, M. Mahler viewed object relations through the prism of symbiosis between mother and child and the process of separation-individuation.

The formation and development of object relations in the early stages of a child’s life significantly affects the subsequent relationships of an adult with the world around him, other people and himself. A person’s object relations are, first of all, his internal relations, the formation of which is carried out under the influence of appropriate ways of perceiving the world, adequate or inappropriate reactions on it, normal or pathological forms of defense that arise in early childhood and make themselves felt in the lives of adults. Therefore, various kinds of disturbances in a child’s object relations can lead to consequences that are fraught with neuroticism in an adult.

Thus, M. Klein believed that fears associated with the child’s fantasies about an attack on him by a “bad”, pursuing object (“the bad” mother’s breast will devour the baby in the same way as in his fantasies he bit, tore and destroyed her) are the basis for the occurrence of hypochondria. Persecution anxiety is included from the very beginning in the child's relationship to objects. According to M. Klein, both persecutory anxiety and depressive anxiety, which is a consequence of the conflict between his love and hate, play a vital role in the early development of a child. If, in the process of the child’s formation of integral objects, overcoming this anxiety of persecution and depressive anxiety occurs successfully, then one of the most important prerequisites for normal development is laid. If disturbances occur in object relations, then “infantile neurosis” is not only not overcome, but, on the contrary, becomes fertile ground for the development of neurotic diseases of an adult, since the split between good and bad objects intensifies, the integration of the psyche becomes difficult, the feeling of persecution strengthens, hatred and attacking objects that are felt to be persecuting becomes dominant, hostility and aggression increase.

M. Balint (1896–1970) called for a revision of classical psychoanalytic theory in terms of the need to pay more attention to the development of object relations. In his opinion, “any neurotic symptom also means a violation of object relations, and individual changes are only one aspect of this process.” In this regard, the classical sources of psychoanalytic theory (obsessive neurosis and melancholia) are only borderline situations due to the significant distance from their objects. Therefore, a theory is needed that would give a reliable description of the development of object relations.

From the point of view of M. Balint, an important area of ​​research for the new theory should be the behavior of the analyst in a psychoanalytic situation, which represents object relations. Observations of how these object relations develop and change, which are influenced by frustration and satisfaction and, in turn, influence the desires, needs, unconscious processes of both participants in the analysis, seem important, capable of becoming “the most important source of material for the theory development of object relations." According to M. Balint, the most significant thing is that psychoanalysis should be based on language and the disclosure of experiences that include the psychology of not one person (the patient), but two people (the patient and the analyst).

The theoretical development of object relations led to certain changes in psychoanalytic technique. If in classical psychoanalysis the analyst adhered to the principle of abstinence and acted as an opaque mirror, then, taking into account object relations, some psychoanalysts began to take on the projective pathological manifestations of transference and pay more attention to the development of the relationship between the analyst and the patient. If earlier the psychoanalyst tried not to get involved in any relationship with the patient, focusing his efforts on interpretations and constructions, now he began to use object relations as a tool for empathic communication with the patient’s regressive experiences. If traditional psychoanalysis appealed to the internal development of the patient, then the orientation of modern object relations psychoanalysis involves an in-depth consideration by the analyst of the formation, growth and enrichment of the relationship between the patient and the therapist.