British Object Relations

Third Year Adult Psychoanalytic Training (APT)
2024-25, Fall Term — Fridays, 1:45-3:15pm
Matthew Brooks, LICSW, FIPA

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Introduction

Welcome to British Object Relations. “Object relations” is an ever-growing body of thought devoted to the idea that our psyches are living, breathing worlds, defined by internalized, affectively charged relationships, and existing in the interplay between inner and outer, wholeness and disintegration, and conscious and unconscious. Our guides for the next 13 weeks are Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, Wilfred Bion, several of their contemporaries, and several of our own.

Object relations theories are paradoxically both developmental and non-linear. As opposed to Freudian approaches to the mind as apparatus or topography, object relations approaches are grounded in how experience is organized and represented at the intrapsychic level, from earliest life on. Object relations is concerned with the quality of mental representations, as well as the processes of thinking, the nature of objects, and, crucially, the function of emotion. 

Historically, object relations builds on and is a response to Freudian theories about drives and identifications — themes you have encountered in, among other sources, Mourning and Melancholia and On Narcissism. The place of drives in object relations is something that we will track throughout this course. In fact, Freud used the term “object” regularly, but speaking broadly he was more interested in drives and their satisfaction or frustration. When he did turn to objects, he tended to focus on their relation to the developing ego and superego. Some object relations theorists, perhaps not surprisingly, have called themselves ‘the true Freudians.’ We will have several chances to see that the history of this field can bring the ideas to life and give them much-needed context.

I hope that our time with British Object Relations will help you question the role of theory in your evolving psychoanalytic identity. I hope that it will help you strengthen your capacity for bearing the here-and-now in your work. I hope that it will help you grow your own ideas about what constitutes therapeutic action. And I hope that you will enjoy it very much.

A note about reading

This is a discussion-based seminar. We will stay close to the texts. Please read the assigned material for each class, and come to each class prepared for dialogue. I encourage reading not only with a highlighter, but with Sharpies, Post-Its, PEP-WEB and psychoanalytic encyclopedias nearby!

For the readings, we have a mix of original sources and later commentaries. You may find that the style of some of the early analysts can be challenging or even seem esoteric. Plenty of wonderful later writers have summarized and synthesized these ideas in clearer language. Reading the originals is important and well worth the challenge. The reward is a unique, and I think empowering, internalization of the ideas you will acquire. 

As with all courses, please bring in or allow yourselves to associate to your own clinical work as it comes to mind. We will go over mutual expectations about participation in class.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this course, candidates will be able to:

1. Describe the major contributions of Klein, Winnicott and Bion to psychoanalysis, and apply their respective models of the mind in assessing and treating patients.
2. Utilize object relations concepts and ideas (such as projective identification, splitting, paranoid-schizoid vs. depressive positions) to more deeply empathize with patients and understand the dyadic clinical encounter.
3. Integrate the concepts of object relations into their own growing psychoanalytic knowledge base and clinical style.

September 6, 2024 — Unconscious phantasy

[25 pages]

We begin with a broad and articulate review of Klein’s concepts of the building blocks of psychic life. Klein’s career was well established by the mid-1920s, and by the late 1920s, she was the central figure of the British Psychoanalytical Society. By the mid-1940s, especially after the Freuds arrived in London in 1938, years of interpersonal conflicts had strained the Society to the breaking point, and Klein’s theories were at the center of the storm. Susan Isaacs, an accomplished early childhood psychologist and educator, was a member of Klein’s inner circle. This paper became the centerpiece of the first five sessions of the Controversial Discussions, enumerating as it did Klein’s ideas about the nature of unconscious life in detail, and asserting Klein’s continuity with Freud. (It was written for those meetings, in 1943, but not published until after the war.)

Isaacs, S. (1948). The Nature and Function of Phantasy. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 29:73-97.