Introduction

The distinguished panelists whose papers will follow have each made important contributions to object relations theory, especially as viewed from the angle of love and the capacity for love in human relationships. Perhaps we might begin by asking why we are forced to speak separately of love and object relations. Does this parallelism of our scientific nomenclature confirm the criticisms that psychoanalytic theory has little to do with the elusive grandeur of love, the ecstasy of sexual passion, the gravity of the human condition, or the infinite subtleness of human relations? We cannot answer such questions today, but we hope to reconsider rigorously a number of recent, promising, and often confusing concepts in the sphere of object relations theory which have captured the center of our most recent clinical and theoretical literature.

What do we mean by object relations theory? There is probably no better definition available in our literature than the thoughtful discussion by Otto Kernberg (1976) in his book, Object Relations Theory and Clinical Psychoanalysis. Kernberg states that object relations theory represents the psychoanalytic study of the nature and origin of interpersonal relations and the nature and origin of intrapsychic structures deriving from past internalized relations with others, observed in the context of present interpersonal relations. Psychoanalytic object relations theory focuses on the internalization of interpersonal relations and, as we shall see, it is the misunderstanding of this single fact,