Scientific Proceedings—panel Reports—Current Concepts of Object Relations Theory

The Chairman, Mark Kanzer, reminded us that "Object Relations Theory" has become especially associated with direct observations on preoedipal phases of the mother-child unit. The difficulties in verifying reconstructions derived from adult treatment from these early phases and correlating them with the data of direct observations are well known. At the same time, object relations observers find it harder and harder to follow the child's development as he grows older. Despite these difficulties, a solid core of interest in child development has inevitably characterized the history of psychoanalysis. Studies of the child's actual object relations can no longer be considered "peripheral," if indeed they ever were. Preoedipal reconstructions played a very important part in Freud's own self-analysis. Later, when he developed a theory of instincts and their vicissitudes, he defined them in relation to the ego (or self, or subject) and the external world as objects. Differentiation and relatedness developed between self and objects as the personality matured.

Kanzer then traced the modern phases of object relations thinking from Hartmann's work through that of Jacobson, Kris, Anna Freud, Erikson, Spitz, Loewald, his own work, and others. Associated with the new emphasis upon object relations, a dyadic approach in the traditional treatment of adults became perceptible. Tracing transferences all the way back to early