The Concept of Internal Object Relations

The development of the concept of internal object relations is traced through the work of Freud, Abraham, Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott and Bion. I have proposed that the establishment of an internal object relationship requires a dual splitting of the ego into a pair of dynamically unconscious suborganizations of personality, one identified with the self and the other with the object in the original early object relationship. These aspects of ego stand in a particular relationship to one another the nature of which is determined by the infant's subjective experience of the early relationship. Since both the self- and the object-component of the internal object relationship are aspects of the ego, each has the capacity to generate experience (e.g. to think, feel, and perceive) semi-autonomously and yet in relation to one another.

Resistance is understood as the difficulty a patient has in relinquishing pathological attachments involved in unconscious internal object relationships. The view of internal objects proposed in this paper brings into focus types of resistance heretofore only partially understood. These types of resistance are based on the need of the internal object (suborganization of ego) not to be changed by the self (suborganization of ego), the dependency of the internal object on the self, and the envy and jealousy of the internal object for the self-component of the internal object relationship.