Attachment and objectrelations theory.

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Attachment and object-relations theory.

• The importance of early childhood studies
  Winnicott, Bowlby, Daniel Stern and
  intersubjectivity

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• Psychodynamic Theory and Practice
• Course COP020M01OA
• Postgraduate Diploma in the Practice of
  Counselling Psychology/MSc
• School of Psychology and Therapeutic Studies,
  Whitelands College

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Development of the British Object-Relations School

• 1950s great flowering of object relations as a
  distinctive position within psychoanalysis
• Segal, Rosenfeld and Bion laid foundations of
  present Kleinian practice
• Michael Balint worked from the concept of the
  basic fault ( in the sense of a geological
  fault)- the fit between the developing child and
  the kind of care she receives

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Effective psychotherapy according to Holmes 2001
(see more later)

• Containment
• Insight
• New experience
• See if you can trace these three elements through
  the work of the great attachment and self
  theorists

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Attachment

• Concerned with the inter rather than the intra

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Influences on Attachment Theory

• Reaction to the ferment of object-relations
  theory
• A profound response to the direct observation of
  infants and the growing child. See Susan Isaacs,
  the play movement in education and reactions to
  Truby King type methods of child-rearing

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Basic Concepts of attachment Theory

• Infant is a social being from the beginning
• Born with a propensity to socialisation.
  Programmed to engage with primary caregiver
• Proximity seeking behaviour (attachment) a
  universal biological need and persists throughout
  life
• Early bonding crucial to later social
  relationships
• If need not met in infancy irreversible damage to
  adults capacity to form affectionate bonds? (See
  Storr Solitude)

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Winnicott (1896-1971)

• Belief that life is worth living in spite of the
  fact that life is difficult
• Emphasis on the observation of infants
• Foundation of Freud and Klein It is not
  possible to be original except on the basis of
  tradition

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Winnicotts Basic Assumption1

• 1. Self central to his theory but not easy to
  define
• central self from the beginning later to become
  core of the self
• The central self is defined in terms of the
  growth that is already taking place in order for
  a personal identity to be realised (in Davis and
  Wallbridge 198142)

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Basic Assumption 1 continued

• Growth as moving and motivating force from the
  beginning
• A capacity to become what one is
• Central self, like the id is source of energy but
  not given the same primacy as the id drives
• More interested in Freuds ego psychology than
  Freuds id psychology
• Enriched by Kleins ideas about fantasy

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Basic assumption 2

• The fact of dependence
• No such thing as a baby- always will be a baby
  and someone
• Absolute dependence gives way to relative
  dependence, and eventually to a state he calls
  towards independence
• Independence is never absolute

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A brilliant article by Winnicott

• Hate in the Counter-transference (1947) Based
  on a Paper read to the British Psych-Analytic
  Society on 5 February. Int. J. of Psycho-Anal.,
  Vol. XXX, 1949
• Rescues W from those who would turn him into a
  sentimentalist
• Have a look its very reassuring!

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Bowlby (1907-1990) and the self

• Attachment intrinsic to human nature
• Adults seek out their secure base
• Thought what are the ways in which you establish
  a secure base when you face a new situation?

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Bowlbys phases of attachment

• 1. Pre-attachment (birth-6 weeks) Tracking with
  eyes
• 2 Attachment-n-the making phase (6 weeks- 6-8
  weeks) more marked orientation towards mother
• 3 Clearcut attachment (6-8 months- 18-14 months)
  Show separation anxiety, pursue proximity.
  Concurrent with Piagets object permanancy

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Bowlby 4. reciprocal relationship

• Rapid development of language and mental
  representation
• Separation anxiety declines during the 3rd year
• Emphasises a positive, enduring, affectional tie
  to the caregiver

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Daniel Stern

• Inferential leaps from the study of developmental
  psychology to what it might be like subjectively
  for the infant
• Attempt at empathetic understanding where there
  is no language
• Of use to counselling psychologist because shows
  a way of developing empathy with Simon or
  Georgie, or Karen

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A Theory of Self that feels

• Cf. attempts to say objective things about a
  category e.g. a pathology, or kind of presenting
  problem

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Domains of self-experience emerge at a
particular time but active throughout life

• Domain One The emergent self sense of
  organisation in the process of formation (within
  first two months)
• Properties of people and things
• Categorical affects angry, happy, sad
• Vitality affects dynamic, kinetic terms e.g.
  surging, fading, explosive, crescendo

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Domain Two The core self (2-6 months)

• Development of a sense of agency as baby realises
  he /she is an active agent in events
• Sense that he/she has separate physical being
  from mother
• Sense that has states of being that belong to
  him/her alone
• Experience of self-with-another (dominated by eye
  to eye, face to face interactions

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Domain Three The subjective self (about nine
months)

• Baby senses that has interior subjective life of
  own
• Sharing of subjective experience e.g. wanting to
  share delight with a given object, even though
  without language
• Baby becomes a reader of the human heart and mind
• Sharing or non-sharing of mental states has a
  profound effect on development

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Domain Four the verbal self (18 months)

• Leap into the world of words
• Play out events , past, present and future on the
  stage of the mind
• Dark side Language may split thought away from
  emotion
• Some things cant be caught with words
• Schism is confusing simple wholeness of life is
  broken

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The search for a secure baseJeremy Holmes (2001)
Hove Brunner-Routledge

• Advances the idea of attachment as a therapy in
  its own right
• Consequently there is a distinct role for the
  therapist analogous to parent figure
• Integrates attachment and psychoanalytic theory

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Attachment in practice

• Atonements
• Emotional Proximity
• Forming and Maintaining the therapeutic alliance
• Challenge
• Balance ( between self and the world)
• Therapist freedom of movement
• Negative capability ( tolerance for uncertainty
  and doubt)
• The Thinking mind

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From Holmes Preface p xii

• Attachment theory puts the search for security
  above all other psychological motivators, and
  posits the attachment bond as the starting point
  for survival, a precondition for all meaningful
  interactions
• (cf. psychoanalysis which starts from desire)
• Fairbairn (1952) Sex is a signpost to the object

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Kohut and Self Psychology (Associated with
North American School of Psychology)

• Places self at the centre of personality
• Personality develops along two narcissistic or
  self-expressive lines called grandiosity and
  idealisation
• Single cohesive psychological structure called
  the self replaces Freuds id, ego and super ego
  as macrostructures of the mind

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Kohut and Freud

• Collateral rather than contradictory to Freud
• Consistent with a general theory of
  psychoanalysis
• Both make the mental act the fundamental
  construct of theory
• Similar clinical behaviour e.g. confrontation of
  resistances and working through of the
  transference

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BUT

• Kohuts explanation of events in the analysis of
  disorders of the self varies,however, in that the
  patient develops a narcissistic or self-object
  transference, rather than a classic neurotic
  transference (Patton and Meara 199248)

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In 1971 Kohut argued

• Self, the content of the ego is organising centre
  of the ego subject to the demands of narcissistic
  libido ( a variation of ego psychology/object
  relations) an effort to keep his theory
  consistent with classical psychoanalysis
• Not logically possible to have self as organiser
  when at the same time it is an aspect of the ego

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Sohe learned from this inconsistencyand in 1977

• Abandoned classical formulations of drives and
  macrostructures
• Theory not now reducible to those of ego
  psychology/object relations
• Psycho-analytic self-psychology stand on its own
  but still collateral to the classicists

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But Kohut not a humanistic version of
psychoanalysis

• Rogers doesnt subscribe to psychoanalytic
  methodological principles e.g. avoids determinism
• By contrast Kohut assumes antecedents of
  behaviour are formative forms of adaptation
  reside in early childhood, interacting with
  parental figures

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Kohut uses empathy in two additional ways that
Rogers does not

• Incorpotaes the concept at a level of theory, by
  making it an attribute of normal parenting
• Elevates empathy as a methodological principle
  vicarious introspection
• Parents use empathy to understand the needs that
  the childs expressive displays communicate
  through his or her exhibitionistic and idealistic
  actions

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The development of the self

• Born with native talents and skills, and with
  self-expressive narcissistic trends that occur in
  grandiosity and idealisation
• Personality development is a matter of genesis
  and maturation of the bi-polar self
• Constituent elements of self objects are
  grandiosity and idealisation

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Attempts to regain original bliss

• Child represents its experience to itself by
  constructing loose, fragmented mental images
• As psychological structures these images are
  frail or dis-cohesive, transitory and unreliable

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The cohesive infantile self and its self-objects
(18 months)

• Self now serves as an organising centre for the
  infants personality
• Self is subject to break up and re-fragmentation
• No distinction between self and others- like a
  part object in Freudian terms

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The mirroring self-object

• Child constructs this of the caregiver as
  faithful mirror of the childs greatness
• Childs self-esteem as a faithful mirror of the
  childs greatness
• Childs self esteem maintained in the grandiose
  sector
• Child only aware of the mirroring function when
  the caregiver is absent

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The idealised self-object

• Child constructs an idealised self-object.
  Consists of the powerful, omnipotent parent in
  relation to the idealising child
• Child gains from this when she feels she is in
  want. I am great. You are great but then I am
  part of you
• Kohut maintains we need self subject/object
  relations throughout our lives

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The break up of the infantile self

• Grandiose and idealising sectors of the self
  normally develop into reality-based formations
  which provide cohesion (transmuting
  internalisation)
• Infantile self-objects rearranged into different
  psychological structures which are then
  internalised as part of the self
• Contingent on the withdrawal of the approving
  parent

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The development of the self and the grandiose
sector

• Carrier of the persons ambition/initiative
• Expressed in childhood as exhibitionism

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Development of the self and the idealised sector

• Kohut 1987 normal development involves merger
  with omnipotent figure, later de-idealisation.
  Incorporation of the idealised self-object into
  the self as an emerging pattern of goal setting
  ideals
• The tension gradient represents the two poles
  of the self. Action-promoting tendency that
  arises from an individuals ambitions and ideals

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Disturbances of the self

• Chronic or traumatic frustration of the childs
  need for the mirroring self-object and/or wish
  for merger with the idealised self-object
• Results in defensive/ compensatory manoeuvres to
  avoid painful sense of fragmentation
• The earlier the defect in the self, the more
  severe the adult disturbance

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Narcissism according to Kohut

• Defect in either the grandiose or the idealising
  sector of the self
• The defect in either sector is unusually severe
• Compensatory manoeuvres increase the healthier
  parts of the self and ignore the defective parts

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Treatment of narcissism

• Persons self-esteem is extremely vulnerable
• Vulnerable client will either try to use the
  counsellor as mirroring or idealising self-object
  in order to resume the process of development

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Implications of intersubjectivity for counsellors

• Client/Counsellor at the intersection of two
  subjectives
• Problem if there is a failure to build shared
  meanings
• Attunement/empathy
• Implications for the use of Gestalt, body therapy
  etc
• Would cognitive therapies miss the point?

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More implications..

• Understanding of shared affectivity. Confirming
  the feeling or idea as a shared experience
• Therapist with psychotic client (mind
  wanders)
• Client Please dont go away
• Therapist sorry

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So what about archaeology

• Stern et al may suggest searching for the domain
  that needs strengthening rather than returning to
  the sensitive period as in classical Freudian
  work.

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Adult attachment

• See Feeney and Noller (1996)
• About the quality of intimate adult relationships
• Quality of these relationships often a
  determinant of subjective well-being
• Uses Bartholomew and Horrowitz (1991) Attachment
  styles amongst young adults, Journal of
  Personality Social Psychology (61) p226

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Attachment styles in adulthood

• Secure
• Dismissing - (prefers not to be dependent or to
  have others dependant on them) Denial of
  attachment
• Preoccupied - wants close intimacy but find
  others reluctant to give such intimacy
• Fearful Find it hard to trust

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The components of romantic love ( just in case
you didnt know)