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A growing demand for empirical studies that help clarify and validate psychoanalytic theories and concepts has been addressed by many authors in recent years (Emde and Fonagy 1997; Wallerstein and Fonagy 1999; Fonagy 2000; Westen 1998; Galatzer-Levy and Hauser 1997). Psychoanalysis is often accused of being far better at generating theories than at testing them. As a result, the field has not been able to produce generally accepted scientific proofs of its theoretical claims and progress as much as other areas of psychology and medicine (Kandell 1998, 1999).
Psychoanalytic theories in general and object relations theory in particular maintain that relationships, beginning with the motherinfant dyad, are primary and that intrapsychic, interpersonal, and group experiences lay the foundation for the development of individual identity. Object relations theory argues that the infant can relate to others at a very early age and that relationships with others are therefore primary. Introjection, identification, projection, and projective identification are some of the psychodynamic processes involved in the creation and shaping of the internal world.
It is well known that infants are born with a limited capacity for autoregulation and rely on the primary caregiver to return them to homeostasis when emotionally overwhelmed by positive or negative affective states. These interpersonal regulatory processes have been