Put another way, Fairbairn, one of the fathers of or theory, believed that psychopathology and behavior disorders develop as a result of disturbed object relationships. These object relations are the most primitive constructs in an infant's psyche, and unlike Freud who believed sexual and aggressive drives lay at the heart of the self, the or theorist believes the primary goal of creating object relations is to develop a sense of consistent emotional support (Buckley, an Object Relations Perspective on the Nature of Resistance and Therapeutic Change, 1996)
Put another way, Fairbairn, one of the fathers of or theory, believed that psychopathology and behavior disorders develop as a result of disturbed object relationships. These object relations are the most primitive constructs in an infant's psyche, and unlike Freud who believed sexual and aggressive drives lay at the heart of the self, the or theorist believes the primary goal of creating object relations is to develop a sense of consistent emotional support (Buckley, an Object Relations Perspective on the Nature of Resistance and Therapeutic Change, 1996)
At the same time, the bad-mother-object is internalized; therefore, the abused becomes an abuser himself. If not resolved, this internalized and externalized hatred and aggression toward women can eventually lead the grown man to abuse or even kill women in an attempt to destroy that hated internalized object that "haunts" him (Knight, 2006)
In fact, the concept of basic, dyadic units (of self representation-object representation-affect state linking them) as "building blocks" of the supraordinate structure of the ego, superego, and id is the central concept of contemporary psychoanalytic object relations theory." Otto Kernberg, 1998 (McGinn, 1998, p
The infant is not yet able to reconcile good and bad feelings for mother and breast, so therefore keeps the good and bad versions separate and distinct. In addition, the infant attempts to control the scary feelings of aggression and anger toward mother by internalizing them as part of the self; this also occurs with positive emotion (Murdock, 2009)
For example, an infant whose instinctual desires for an intimate, stable, secure, and loving mother-object were never satisfied may grow up to live with a chronic emotional emptiness that either results in depression and anxiety, and/or he constantly attempts to fill the void with addictions to drugs, alcohol, food, sex, money, power, etc. (Stewart, Elder, & Gosling, 1996)
By recognizing these thoughts, challenging the belief system, and then helping the patient adjust their beliefs in a more realistic fashion both patient and therapist work together to change the patient's perceptions and form more functional and realistic ones. Thus, cognitive therapy assists the patient to recognize and reassess their patterns of negative thinking and replace them with positive cognitions that more closely reflect the real world (Beck, 1976)
Two schools of Object Relations theorists split off from Freud: one group often termed the British Independent group disagreed with the Freudian notion that behavior was a function of instincts and placed the ego at the center of personality (founded by British analysts Ronald Fairbairn, Donald Winnicott); the Kleinian group (founded by Melanie Klein) retained Freud's view concerning instincts but disagreed about the role of unconscious fantasy in the regulation of instinctual tension. Both schools concentrate on the first three years of life and the mother-infant relationship as being the main component of psychic structure formation (Scharff & Scharff, 1998)
The emotions and attitudes experienced by the therapist serve to form a representation of how others who deal with the patient react. The therapist examines such experiences as a set of clues as to the patient's problems and will then use the countertransference experiences in interpretation of the patient's transference (Stadter, 2009)