Pioneers in Object Relations Clinical Thinking:
Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939)
On May 6th, we celebrate birthday of the founder of psychoanalysis and one of the most influential thinkers
of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud. Despite the fact that British Object Relations school of psychoanalysis
had many disagreements with Freud’s visions of human psychic structure, Freud was indeed the first one
who envisioned object relations as a concept, when he said, “Thus the shadow of the object fell upon
the ego” (Mourning and Melancholia, 1917).“It is well worth notice that, although mourning involves grave departures from the normal attitude to life, it never
occurs to us to regard it as a pathological condition and refer to it medical treatment. We rely on it being overcome
after a certain lapse of time, and we look upon any interference with it as useless or even harmful. The distinguishing
mental features of melancholia are a profoundly painful sense of dejection, a cessation of interest in the outside
world, loss of capacity to love, inhibition of all activity...a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree
that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment.”“[Melancholias] show us the ego divided, fallen apart into two pieces, one which rages against the second. This
second piece is the one which has been altered by introjection and which contains the lost object. But the piece
that behaves so cruelly is not unknown to us either. It comprises the conscience, a critical agency within the
ego, which even in normal times takes up a critical attitude towards the ego, though never so relentlessly
and so unjustifiably.”“We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost
our love object or its love.”
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Intro to the Object Relations Thinking and
Clinical Technique
- with Dr. Kavaler-Adler (part 1).
Projective Identification:
Object Relations View (part 2 of the mini-video series)
Time as an Object - Object Relations view (part 3
of mini-video series)
Self Sabotage - Object Relations view
(part 4 of mini-video series)
Fear of Success - Object
Relations View (part 5 of mini-video series) - NEW!
Mourning, Developmental
vs. Pathological (part 6 of mini-video series) - NEW
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Please note - NEW
- Mail correspondence to: ORI
Administrator, 75-15 187 Street, Fresh Meadows, NY, 11366-1725
New: Tel: 646.522.0387 Fax:
718.785.3270 Email:
admin@ORINYC.org
Inquiries about psychotherapy
and psychoanalysis training:
DrKavalerAdler@gmail.com
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professional video of the ORI's 2011 Annual 20th Anniversary Conference on
Dialectics of Mortality and Immortality: Time as a Persecutory vs. a Holding
Object.
